Under the Trump Administration, ICE agents are being empowered to round up undocumented immigrants and deport them from America. The reports of FBI and ICE agents tapping into state DMV databases come at a particularly volatile political moment. Elijah Cummings (D – Maryland) pointed out, these facial recognition scans are “often done in the shadows with no consent.” Some privacy advocates and digital rights groups are now calling for an “all-out ban” on facial recognition technology, concerned that the seeds are already being planted for a massive state surveillance infrastructure. And, making matters even worse, all of this is happening without anyone’s knowledge (at least, until now). Citizens with absolutely no criminal background are now, in essence, being scanned and checked by the FBI for wrongdoing. Jim Jordan (R – Ohio) complained that no one has ever signed off on giving their photos to law enforcement agencies, and there was never any consent given. Once the Georgetown law researchers released their findings (all gathered according to public records requests), the public blowback to the controversy was swift and immediate. Public reaction to the facial recognition controversy
ICE DRIVER LICENSE FACIAL RECOGNITION LICENSE
And there’s often no need even to link the request to a serious crime: in many cases, FBI officers are taking advantage of facial recognition technology and access to driver’s license photos for petty theft cases and low-level crimes.
In fact, it’s often as easy as sending an email request to a local DMV contact, and getting a reply back in a few minutes.
In conducting these facial recognition scans, there’s no need for a warrant, and no need for any official sign-off. states allow the FBI to scan driver’s license photos, and such activity actually seemed to pick up between 20. That’s roughly 50,000 facial recognition searches per year! In fact, the FBI is now conducting more than 4,000 facial recognition searches per month, thanks in large part to how easy the whole process has become. For example, since 2011, the FBI has conducted over 390,000 facial recognition searches of federal and local databases, including state DMV databases. These facial scans are much more prevalent than anyone could have possibly imagined.
ICE DRIVER LICENSE FACIAL RECOGNITION SERIES
Through a series of public records requests, the Georgetown researchers were able to piece together the size and extent of such facial recognition programs. In a surprising number of states, it’s possible to obtain a driver’s license even without proof of citizenship or residency, so that makes the job of ICE officers even easier. And, if an ICE agent is trying to round up undocumented immigrants in order to deport them later, he or she can also take advantage of facial recognition scans. For example, if an FBI officer has a photo of a crime suspect, all he or she has to do is run a facial recognition scan on a state DMV database, and it’s possible to come up with a name and address for the suspect.
All a law enforcement agent has to do is contact the local DMV, and it’s then incredibly easy to scan through the entire database to find a potential match.
It turns out that state driver’s license databases are a “goldmine” of photos for conducting facial recognition scans. Implications of scanning DMV databases with facial recognition technologyĪccording to a report that first appeared in the Washington Post, a group of privacy researchers at Georgetown University Law School found that FBI and ICE agents are scanning millions of Americans’ faces without their knowledge or consent.
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