FBI seeks options for facial recognition searches against online images

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations wants to survey the market for facial recognition providers that collect facial images from open sources and public platforms and run searches against them.

The request for information from FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) states that with advances in the commercial market for facial recognition, it would like to get a better idea of its options for this kind of capability.

The agency explains the motivation behind its RFI as relating to major criminal, counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations: “Investigative leads are often derived from open-source images posted on social media profiles, Internet sites, and the dark web; for example, individuals often use social media to communicate, coordinate, and conduct criminal activity.”

Criminals wanted by the FBI and its partners are not always American residents with driver’s licenses, passports or criminal histories that would make their face biometrics available for searching.

Clearview AI is known to have a database that holds more than 50 billion images scraped from the public internet. Vendors must be U.S.-based, and it appears that Clearview has little competition in its particular line of business.

The RFI asks for vendors to identify their technology, along with the others that would be necessary to provide in on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Vendors are also asked to provide any results obtained under NIST’s Face Recognition Technology Evaluation (FRTE) program.

The FBI also wants to know about vendors’ disclosure and consent practices, and data security and management practices. The agency asks if vendors can support turning face images into biometric templates before submitting them to search for potential matches. The FBI also asks for up to three current customers to use as references.

Requests for clarification are due by October 1, and responses are due by October 15.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  FBI  |  police  |  RFI