Law enforcement agencies in the state were now permitted access only to face recognition systems owned and operated by the Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV), the state police, or the FBI. As a result, the universe of photos that police could query was much more limited than what was available through a system like Clearview, which gives users access to all public photos on the internet. 

To hunt for someone’s image, police had to submit a written request and obtain a court order. That’s a lower bar than a warrant, but previously, they’d just been able to ask by emailing over a photo to search for suspects in misdemeanor and felony offenses including fraud, burglary, and identity theft. 

At the time, critics felt the bill was lacking. “They passed some initial regulations that don’t go nearly far enough but were an improvement over the status quo, which was nothing,” says Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts, a commission member.

Still, the impetus toward a national ban was building. Just as the commission began meeting in June 2021, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and seven other members of Congress introduced a bill to ban federal government agencies, including law enforcement, from using face recognition technology. All these legislators were left-leaning, but at the time, stricter regulation had bipartisan support.

The Massachusetts commission met regularly for a year, according to its website, with a mandate to draft recommendations for the state legislature about further legal limits on face recognition.

As debate ensued, police groups argued that the technology was essential for modern policing. 

“The sort of constant rhetoric of many of the appointees who were from law enforcement was that they did not want to tie the hands of law enforcement if the X, Y, Z worst situation happened—a terrorist or other extremely violent activity,” said Jamie Eldridge, a Massachusetts state senator who cochaired the commission, in an interview with MIT Technology Review.