A new law has been announced in the state of Maine prohibiting the government use of facial recognition.

Indeed, the legislation will ban the government from using facial recognition except for specific situations such as identifying a person involved in a serious crime or proactive fraud. Maine police won’t have direct access to facial recognition so they will need to go through the FBI and Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles to run these kinds of searches.

Moreover, the law tries to avoid loopholes that the police have used to get access to the technology. This is then seen as a major win for actions against facial recognition.

It will help people in Maine be more in control of their civil rights and civil liberties and avoid tech companies and government agencies to profit from the use of face surveillance technology.

The state of Washington has a law against facial recognition technology but it still allows the police to conduct surveillance and deny access to services like housing or education enrollment. The states of Virginia and Massachusetts have also legislatures banning some police use of facial recognition, but they still fail at regulating the technology in schools and state agencies.

On the other hand, the new law in Maine allows citizens the ability to sue the state if they’ve been unlawfully targeted by facial recognition. The legislation should go live on October 1st, 2021.