Protecting Montanans from government surveillance

By: Senator Ken Bogner

We scored a big win for Montanans’ privacy and against invasive surveillance technology during this year’s legislative session. My Senate Bill 397 severely restricts government’s use of facial recognition technology and is now law in the Last Best Place.

Legislators conducted a study of facial recognition between the 2021 and 2023 legislative sessions. We learned how state government was beginning to deploy the technology and even discovered that at least one school district (Sun River Valley) had already installed it in its schools a couple years ago. We also heard from...