California lawmakers today passed a bill placing a three-year state-wide moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement agencies.

AB 1215, The Body Camera Accountability Act, was introduced earlier this year by assemblymember Phil Tang, a Democrat. Both San Francisco and Oakland previously passed similar bills preventing the use of facial recognition by law enforcement agencies, now the ban's gone state-wide.

The bill goes into effect on 1 January, 2020, and will be reviewed under a "sunset provision" in 2023.

Tang, according to an ACLU statement, says the bill will protect Californians:

Without my bill, facial recognition technology essentially turns body cameras into a 24-hour surveillance tool, giving law enforcement the ability to track our every movement. Let's not become a police state and keep body cameras as they were originally intended – to provide police accountability and transparency.