75% of Californians see facial recognition technology as beneficial for law enforcement

Seventy-five percent of California residents see the use of facial recognition technologies by law enforcement as appropriate and beneficial, according to new research from Zogby Analytics. The statewide interactive survey of 806 California residents was conducted from Oct. 28-31 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5%.

Californians overwhelmingly believe that the use of facial recognition technologies is appropriate for finding missing persons and children (84%) and solving crimes (73%). California citizens also seem to be in support of tools that would enable law enforcement to automate the search of images available on the public Internet and use those images to help identify both crime victims and suspects. Key findings on the issue include:

• 88% said law enforcement should be able to search publicly available social media photos to help find missing children and to find or prosecute child sex offenders/traffickers
• 80% said law enforcement should be able to search publicly available photos to help find endangered adults and 82% are in favor of using the technology to positively identify endangered individuals
• 76% said law enforcement should be able to search publicly available social media photos to investigate criminal activity, 84% support the searching public images to apprehend and prosecute violent offenders with 80% supporting the use to arrest or prosecute drug traffickers.
• 87% are in favor of law enforcement public image searches to identify individuals on a terrorist watch list at public events
• 62% are in favor of the search of public images if it reduces the need to interrogate and investigate witnesses
• 71% think that private facial recognition database that only includes arrest mug shots would have a risk of being discriminatory with 55% saying it was a high or moderate risk.

The full survey results can be found here: https://zogbyanalytics.com/images/IL-CA/Crosstabs_CA_Adults_110121.pdf

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