How many years will it take to get past paranoid fears about facial-recognition technology? The idea that Big Brother could abuse it is no reason to throw away a useful tool.

The latest is a bill from Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-B’klyn), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) to ban the use of the technology in federally funded public housing. The trio’s gripe: “Surveillance technology is often used to track and control vulnerable communities, particularly communities of color.” The same thinking has led San Francisco, Oakland and Somerville, Mass., to nix any government use of the technology.

Thing is, civil liberties types used to raise the same fears about putting police cameras in the city’s public housing projects. But over the past two decades, public and private video surveillance systems have proved invaluable in fighting crime, ID’ing suspects and tracking their movements and proving cases of unwarranted police use of force, while school zone cameras have made children safer.

As one local leader told The Post, “They obviously haven’t lived in some of these developments where criminals are free to roam and prey on elderly tenants and others.”

This doesn’t mean questions are off limits. Critics charge that facial-recognition tech tends to misidentify women and people with darker skin tones. But that’s a purely technical issue — one that needs working out by the folks aiming to make big money selling the technology.

It’s fine to worry about, and guard against, the misuse of any new technology. But that’s a matter for reasonable regulation — not for trying to stop the clock.