Pew Poll: 59 Percent Back Facial Recognition Security Use

Fifty-nine percent of Americans in a recent Pew Research Center study backed law enforcement in using facial recognition technology in public spaces to assess potential security threats.

In addition, 56%said they trusted law-enforcement agencies to use facial recognition technology responsibly.

But Americans are less trusting of facial recognition being used responsibly by technology companies (36%) and by advertisers (18%), the Pew study, released last week, found.

Further, only 36% would like to see the technology used for tracking those entering or leaving apartment buildings, while 30% would back monitoring employee attendance and 15% would approve assessing how people respond to public advertising displays in real time.

Study results also differ among age and racial groups, and political orientation.

"A substantially smaller share of young adults think it is acceptable for law enforcement to use facial recognition to assess security threats in public spaces relative to older Americans," Aaron Smith, Pew's director of Data Labs, said in a blog post.

"Similarly, smaller shares of black and Hispanic adults than whites think the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement is acceptable, and the same is true of Democrats compared with Republicans," he said.

Pew surveyed 4,200 Americans in June, also finding that 13% of those polled had heard nothing about facial recognition.

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