Should Public Buses Use Facial Recognition? One US City Is Putting It to the Test

Every time you board a public bus in Kansas City, Missouri, a camera may soon scan your face in seconds, checking it against a list of banned riders, missing persons, and law enforcement watch lists. If there’s no match, the data disappears. If there is one, security is alerted immediately. The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority is pushing ahead with facial recognition on public transit, and the country is watching closely.

A City That Wants to Go First

Kansas City is partnering with SafeSpace Global, a Knoxville, Tennessee-based company that previously deployed live facial recognition in nursing homes, correctional facilities, and schools. Public transit represents its first foray into transportation. Tyler Means, chief mobility and strategy officer at the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, acknowledges the sensitivity but sees this as incremental progress. “Privacy is always a tricky thing,” he said. “We’ve always had cameras on our buses. It’s just new technology.”

How the System Is Designed to Work

Cameras aboard the buses would capture facial images and run them against active alerts in real time. Alerts trigger when someone matches a missing person report, a banned rider, or a watch list approved by the transit authority. If no match is found, the biometric data is deleted immediately. Regular video footage, however, would still be archived on local servers for up to five years. SafeSpace Global CEO Scott Boruff says the system is not recording continuously. “It just captures the face and goes away,” he said.

The Line That Has Never Been Crossed

Civil liberties advocates say the Kansas City plan is unlike anything previously attempted on U.S. public transportation. Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the Project on Speech, Privacy and Technology at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that running facial recognition on live cameras in public spaces is “a line that until recently has never really been crossed in the last 25 years.” His concern is scope. A narrow watch list today, he argues, rarely stays narrow.

Detroit’s Warning from the Recent Past

Detroit’s experience with facial recognition offers a cautionary reference. Beginning around 2019, the Detroit Police Department used the technology to identify suspects, and it wrongfully arrested at least three Black residents based on false matches. Studies showed the technology misidentified people of color at significantly higher rates. A landmark 2024 settlement required the department to overhaul its policies, barring arrests based solely on facial recognition results and mandating officer training on the technology’s known racial bias.

New Orleans Crossed the Line Already

New Orleans became the first U.S. city known to deploy live facial recognition citywide, through a private nonprofit called Project NOLA operating over 200 cameras. The program sent real-time alerts directly to officers’ phones for two years, violating a 2022 city ordinance that restricted the technology to specific violent crime investigations. The police superintendent paused the alert system in April 2025 after a Washington Post exposé, though subsequent reporting suggests officers were never officially ordered to stop.

Critics Say Residents Shouldn’t Be Guinea Pigs

Opposition to the Kansas City plan has been direct. Will Owen, communications director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said riders “should not be guinea pigs for transit systems to test Silicon Valley’s latest unproven, biased surveillance tech.” Privacy advocates draw a clear distinction between cameras that log video and cameras that actively identify faces in real time, even when no crime has occurred. The difference, they argue, transforms passive surveillance into continuous identity screening of ordinary commuters.

Funding Fell Through, but the Plan Grew Bigger

The cameras were slated for installation in spring 2025, in time for Kansas City’s FIFA World Cup matches. The rollout stalled over two issues: buses needed Wi-Fi router upgrades to support both the cameras and a new fare system, and the state of Missouri withdrew its funding contribution over concerns about the facial recognition component. Kansas City is pressing ahead with local and federal money. Means now says the program may launch with as many as 30 buses, more than triple the nine originally planned.

Old School Fill-In During the World Cup

With cameras not yet operational as the World Cup arrived in Kansas City this June, transit officials deployed up to 40 additional officers to patrol stops and transit centers. “We’re kind of going old school to address what we hoped the technology would do,” Means said. City Council member Ryana Parks-Shaw, serving as mayor pro tem, said the delay was worthwhile. “I believe that any use of this kind of technology must be approached carefully, transparently and with clear guardrails,” she said.

A Test with Consequences Beyond Kansas City

What Kansas City ultimately does will likely shape how other U.S. cities approach facial recognition on public transit for years to come. The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and the ACLU have both noted that programs framed as limited pilots rarely stay that way. The Detroit and New Orleans cases established that without binding, enforceable rules, facial recognition expands in scope and causes documented harm. Kansas City’s guardrails, or lack of them, will be the real test.