Half of American Adults Are In a Face-Recognition Database (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Half of American adults are in a face-recognition database, according to a Georgetown University study released Wednesday. That means there's about 117 million adults in a law enforcement facial-recognition database, the study by Georgetown's Center on Privacy and Technology says. The report (PDF), titled "The Perpetual Line-up: Unregulated Police Face Recognition in America," shows that one-fourth of the nation's law enforcement agencies have access to face-recognition databases, and their use by those agencies is virtually unregulated. Where do the mug shots come from? For starters, about 16 states allow the FBI to use facial recognition to compare faces of suspected criminals to their driver's licenses or ID photos, according to the study. "In this line-up," the study says, "it's not a human that points to the suspect -- it's an algorithm." The study says 26 states or more allow police agencies to "run or request searches" against their databases or driver's licenses and ID photos. This equates to "roughly one in two American adults has their photos searched this way," according to the study. Many local police agencies also insert mug shots of people they arrest into searchable, biometric databases, according to the report. According to the report, researchers obtained documents stating that at least five "major police departments," including those in Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles, "either claimed to run real-time face recognition off of street cameras, bought technology that can do so, or expressed an interest in buying it." The Georgetown report's release comes three months after the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that the FBI has access to as many as 411.9 million images as part of its face-recognition database. The study also mentioned that the police departments have little oversight of their databases and don't audit them for misuse: "Maryland's system, which includes the license photos of over two million residents, was launched in 2011. It has never been audited. The Pinellas Country Sheriff's Office system is almost 15 years old and may be the most frequently used system in the country. When asked if his office audits searches for misuse, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri replied, "No, not really." Despite assurances to Congress, the FBI has not audited use of its face recognition system, either. Only nine of 52 agencies (17%) indicated that they log and audit their officers' face recognition searchers for improper use. Of those, only one agency, the Michigan State Police, provided documentation showing that their audit regime was actually functional."

Comments

As everyone should suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

They track you. They track everything they can get their hands on. They abuse the information in any way they please, with no consideration for how that abuse will impact you. They profit from this abuse. They get away with it, and will continue to get away with it in the future.

Re: fingerprints

[amiga3D]

As long as the masses have a fairly comfortable existence they have no real motive to demand anything. They will bitch and moan and whine but they will have too much to lose to really make a stand. As long as people don't get hungry and desperate they are easily managed.

Re:Cry me a river

[Plus1Entropy]

I didn't give up my essential Liberty (privacy) to purchase temporary Safety, I gave it up to "purchase" the privilege of being able to legally drive... Should the government not be allowed to keep a record of valid driver's licenses somewhere?

To me, the real issue related to the Government tracking our data is that we don't know what they're tracking or what they have on us. In the case of a driver's license, I have a pretty good idea: my picture, my DOB, my address (at the time), my registration (hence the kind of car I drive, license plate, etc.), any prior tickets that I have... and I think that's about it. And again, I chose to give all that information to them. If I didn't want to drive I didn't have to. That's the difference I think.