BART director considering facial recognition technology for safety

A member of board of directors for BART, the rapid transit public transportation system serving the San Francisco Bay Area in California, spoke with ABC news this week about adding facial recognition technology to BART’s surveillance system that includes four thousand security cameras.

“We need to be now using those cameras to the best of their ability to make our riders safer,” explained BART director Nick Josefowitz. “This isn’t some big kind of big brother dragnet approach. This is very targeted at folks who have a warrant out for their arrest.”

Josefowitz said he will introduce the idea of integrating the biometric technology at a board meeting this week and ask BART staff to investigate the cost of implementing such a system and how the organization would store and protect data collected.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  criminal ID  |  facial recognition  |  transportation