Warwick, RI Privacy & Surveillance: Facial Recognition Ban (2026)

City Code Sec. 52-13(c)(1) is a hard-coded exception written directly into the ordinance that created Warwick's automated license plate reader program: "Notwithstanding department policy," the ALPR system may never be used in conjunction with facial, voice, iris, or other recognition technologies capable of identifying biometric information. The "notwithstanding" language matters because it means the board of public safety cannot simply approve a future ALPR policy that adds facial recognition; the ban sits above the policy layer and would require the city council to amend the ordinance itself to change it.

The restriction sits alongside five companion bans in the same subsection, including a prohibition on using ALPR to photograph vehicle occupants or pedestrians, capture audio, or run motor vehicle code enforcement, and it was adopted as part of the same 2022 ordinance that created the ALPR program. Because the prohibition is scoped to the license-plate-reader system specifically, it does not by its own text reach every other city department's technology purchases, but it does foreclose the single most likely path a Warwick surveillance camera network would take toward biometric identification: stacking facial recognition software on top of the plate-reader feed the police department already operates on streets and at fixed locations around the city.