Surveillance Technology Ordinance & Facial Recognition Ban
San Francisco's 2019 ordinance did two separate things: it barred city departments from using facial recognition — the first US city to do so — and it required Board of Supervisors approval, with a published impact report and use policy, before any department acquires surveillance technology. Proposition E loosened the approval step for police in 2024; the ban itself stands.
Live
📅 since 2019
🤖 Uses AI
✔ Editor-reviewed
🏛️ GovernanceSafety & securityDigital governmentArtificial intelligenceCitizen participationOpen data
📊 Impact
The register the law created is real and maintained: the city's own inventory listed 93 surveillance technologies on 1 March 2026, and the same report states that 66% of technologies in use or being procured have a Board-approved policy and 7% a draft reviewed by COIT's Privacy and Surveillance Advisory Board. A 2024 lawsuit by the non-profit Secure Justice counted 42 technologies then in use without one.
🎓 Lesson
A transparency law is worth what its enforcement is worth. San Francisco built a working public register — and in the same years its police department admitted six breaches of the facial-recognition ban, won a court case because the ordinance grandfathered technology it already had, and persuaded voters to grant a year's grace before policies are due.
Evidence🏛️ Official
Scale🏙️ City-wide
Sources
↗ San Francisco Board of Supervisors — File 190110, Ordinance No. 103-19 (legislative record)The authoritative record of passage: 'Ordinance amending the Administrative Code to require that City departments acquiring surveillance technology... submit a Board of Supervisors approved Surveillance Technology Policy'. Sponsors Aaron Peskin, Norman Yee, Shamann Walton, Hillary Ronen, Matt Haney, Ahsha Safai; introduced 29 January 2019; final passage 21 May 2019; the Mayor returned it unsigned on 31 May 2019, which is the enactment date the city records.
↗ San Francisco Administrative Code, Chapter 19B — Acquisition of Surveillance Technology (codified text)The two mechanisms, in the law's own words. The ban, 19B.2(d): 'it shall be unlawful for any Department to obtain, retain, access, or use: 1) any Face Recognition Technology on City-issued software or a City-issued product or device; or 2) any information obtained from Face Recognition Technology...'. The carve-out, which applies to the ban only: 'For purposes of subsection 19B.2(d) only, City Department and Department shall not include federally-regulated facilities at the Airport or Port.' The rest of 19B.2 carries the separate approval requirement. Caution for a future check: this publisher returned 403 to our fetch, so the provisions are quoted through the search index of the same page rather than read on it.
↗ TechCrunch — San Francisco passes city government ban on facial recognition tech (14 May 2019)The first-reading vote: 8-1, with District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani dissenting, and the point that the ban reaches city departments only — not personal, business or federal use. Note the limit of the 'first' claim: San Francisco was first to ban government facial recognition, but the acquisition-approval half follows the CCOPS model that Santa Clara County adopted in 2016, so no first is claimed for that mechanism.
↗ SF.gov — Surveillance Technology Inventory (city, operator)The public artefact the ordinance was supposed to produce, and the reason this entry is publishable: a live, department-by-department register of surveillance technologies with their impact reports and approved policies.
↗ COIT — Biannual Surveillance Technology Inventory Report, 1 March 2026 (city, operator)Carries the entry's figures: 'As of March 1, 2026, 66% of surveillance technologies in use or in the process of being procured have a surveillance technology policy approved by the Board of Supervisors, 7% have a draft policy that has been reviewed by the COIT Privacy and Surveillance Advisory Board.' The same report lists 93 technologies and 58 surveillance technology policies. Two cautions: the 93/58 counts and the 66% share use different denominators and should not be arithmetically reconciled; and the PDF did not yield machine-readable text to this desk, so both figures are cited through the search index of the document. Chapter 19B was amended on 19 January 2025 to require this report twice a year, replacing annual reporting.
↗ San Francisco Public Press — Proposition E: Police Department Policies and Procedures (2024 voter explainer)The one-year mechanism in plain terms: Prop E lets police 'acquire and use new surveillance technology on the public without approval from the Board of Supervisors as long as the department submitted a set of policies governing its use within one year'. Also the money: Chris Larsen $250,000; Daniel Lurie $635,000 including $250,000 from his brother; the police union $50,000; the ACLU $200,000 opposed.
↗ Electronic Frontier Foundation — What is Proposition E and why should San Francisco voters oppose it? (Feb 2024, advocacy, labelled)Advocacy, cited for two things it states precisely. The grace period: 'the SFPD can use any technology they want for a full year without publishing an official policy about how they'd use the technology or allowing community members to voice their concerns.' And the disputed facial-recognition reading: EFF reports the City Attorney determined Prop E 'would even enable the SFPD to outfit surveillance tools such as drones and surveillance cameras with face recognition technology', while EFF's own position is that the 2019 ban is clear and survives. The entry states only what is checkable in 2026: 19B.2(d) is still in the code and still being litigated as live law.
↗ Mission Local — Here's how Prop. E could change police surveillance in San Francisco (Feb 2024)The second, stronger mechanism, distinct from the one-year grace: Prop E would 'exempt new police drones and surveillance cameras from the city's technology ordinance altogether, meaning those technologies would not require a policy approved by the Board of Supervisors'. Also the campaign total, 'more than $1.4 million', and Chris Larsen as 'one of the measure's chief financiers'.
↗ The San Francisco Standard — San Francisco voters OK Prop. E, giving more police powers (5 Mar 2024)The result: 'Proposition E was winning with 54.6% of the vote with roughly 37,500 votes still left to count.' The entry says 'more than 54%' rather than a precise certified share, which we did not obtain from the Department of Elections.
↗ Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse — Williams v. San Francisco, CGC-20-587008The correction that keeps this entry honest. Three activists sued in October 2020 over SFPD's live access to the Union Square Business Improvement District camera network during the George Floyd protests. On 9 February 2022 Judge Richard Ulmer granted the city summary judgment: the ordinance let departments keep using surveillance technology they had used before it passed, and the same cameras had been used at 2019 Pride. Notice of appeal filed 25 March 2022; no final appellate decision was found in this review. So the camera episode is documented, but it did not produce a judicial finding that the ordinance was breached.
↗ Electronic Frontier Foundation — San Francisco Police Accessed Business District Camera Network to Spy on Protestors (Jul 2020)The public-records work that surfaced the episode: SFPD 'received a real-time remote link to more than 400 surveillance cameras' operated by the Union Square Business Improvement District, a non-city entity, between 31 May and 7 June 2020.
↗ The San Francisco Standard — SFPD skirted facial-recognition ban, lawsuit says (18 Jul 2024)The admitted breaches and the suit. Police 'copped to circumventing the ban six times, blaming two officers for most of the violations'; the non-profit Secure Justice alleges at least six more officers did so 'at least seven other times by asking neighboring agencies to use the technology for them'. The breaches were left out of SFPD's 2023 annual surveillance report, itself a breach of the 2019 ordinance. The suit also identifies 42 technologies deployed without the required disclosures and seven with no annual report. No final judgment was found as of July 2026.
↗ 48 Hills — A move to undermine SF's law that controls police surveillance (Oct 2025)The live threat to the ordinance as of this review: Supervisor Matt Dorsey introduced legislation to strip the private right of action that lets residents and organisations sue over violations, calling the law 'an onerous mess' that invites 'baseless but costly lawsuits'. The proposal does not touch the facial-recognition ban. Introduced only, not voted, at publication.
↗ The San Francisco Standard — SF once led the fight against police surveillance (25 Mar 2026)Currency. What the city is running two years after Prop E: 'Last month, the SFPD recorded a record 700 drone flights — an average of 25 per day', across 98 devices, and 400 privately funded Flock automated plate readers, with Chris Larsen again the main funder.
↗ KQED — San Francisco police audit shows feds improperly accessed licence plate data hundreds of times (18 Jun 2026)Included as context and as a boundary marker, not as an ordinance outcome. SFPD's own audit found the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center and the West States Information Network searched the city's plate-reader data hundreds of times since May 2025, and access was disabled. The rule broken is California's 2015 state law on sharing plate data with federal and out-of-state agencies — not Chapter 19B — so it is deliberately kept out of the entry's impact.
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Surveillance Technology Ordinance & Facial Recognition Ban” — San Francisco, United States. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/sf-surveillance-ordinance/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
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