1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

As a constituent, I am asking you to introduce, or sign on as a cosponsor of, legislation banning continuous facial surveillance in Iowa, modeled on the law Montana enacted in 2023. Montana's Senate Bill 397, sponsored by Sen. Kenneth Bogner and signed into law by Governor Gianforte, prohibits state and local government agencies from obtaining, retaining, or using “continuous facial surveillance” — defined as monitoring public places or image sets with facial recognition technology to match faces against a prepopulated list, including real-time or stored-footage scanning for general surveillance without particularized suspicion of a specific target. Montana's law also requires a warrant before law enforcement can run an individualized facial recognition search, with narrow exceptions for investigating serious crimes, locating missing persons, and identifying the deceased. Montana and Utah were the first states to adopt a warrant requirement of this kind, and by the end of 2024 fifteen states had enacted some form of facial recognition restriction. Iowa currently has no comparable statute. Without one, nothing in state law stops a city, county, or state agency from installing camera networks that continuously scan every face that passes by and match it against a watchlist — in effect, a persistent, suspicionless surveillance system for anyone in a public place. That capability is a fundamentally different threat to privacy than a targeted, individualized search, which is why Montana banned it outright rather than merely regulating it. I am requesting that you introduce, or cosponsor, an “Iowa Facial Recognition Privacy Act” that would: •  Ban continuous facial surveillance by any government agency, with no exceptions; •  Require a warrant for any individualized law enforcement facial recognition search, limited to serious crimes, missing persons, and identification of the deceased; •  Require meaningful human review before any facial recognition match is used to support an arrest or charge, and defendant notice when the technology was used; •  Require written public-use policies before any agency can use facial verification for services like ID checks; and •  Give Iowans a private right of action to enforce the law. I would welcome the chance to discuss this further, and I would be glad to provide additional research, including Montana's statutory text and independent reporting on how the law has worked in practice, if that would be useful to you or your staff. Would you be willing to introduce this bill, or to sign on in support if a colleague introduces similar legislation this session? Thank you for your time and for your service to Iowa.