Category Archives: San Francisco

San Francisco is first US city to ban police use of facial recognition tech

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Supervisors vote eight to one to restrict surveillance: ‘We can have security without being a security state’

San Francisco supervisors voted to make the city the first in the United States to ban police and other government agencies from using facial recognition technology.

Supervisors voted eight to one in favor of the “Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance”, which will also strengthen existing oversight measures and will require city agencies to disclose current inventories of surveillance technology.

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San Francisco destroyed by earthquake – archive, 19 April 1906

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19 April 1906: Thousands of buildings were either damaged or destroyed, and several hundred persons killed

New York, Wednesday
Early this morning a violent earthquake wrecked the business quarter of the city of San Francisco, and an appalling fire completed the devastation. All the land wires were broken, and for some hours the United States was in an agony of suspense. The absence of authentic news produced the wildest rumours. Now that communication has been partially restored the story is scarcely less alarming, for it is known that not less than 1,500 people have perished, and some estimates place the figure ultimately at more than double that number.

Related: Mark Oliver on the 100th anniversary of the San Francisco quake

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White House considered releasing detained migrants in sanctuary cities – report

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Officials sought to pressure immigration authorities in effort to retaliate against Trump’s political opponents, Washington Post reports

White House officials have tried to pressure US immigration authorities to release migrants detained at the border into so-called sanctuary cities such as San Francisco to retaliate against Donald Trump’s political adversaries, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The Post, which reviewed emails on the issue and spoke to unnamed officials at the Department of Homeland Security, said the White House proposed the measure at least twice in the past six months. Sanctuary cities are those where local officials decline to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

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