Milwaukee police debate trading biometric data for Biometrica facial recognition

Although it has pledged to seek public consultation before signing a contract with a biometrics provider, the Milwaukee Police Department is considering engaging biometrics firm Biometrica as a provider in exchange for access to its database of 2.5 million mugshot photos.

During a meeting of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission and Common, Heather Hough, Chief of Staff of the Milwaukee Police Department, takes a moment or two of self-congratulation in noting that Milwaukee police are seeking input from the public – even though “we didn’t have to do this. We wanted this opportunity to hear from our community before we move forward.”

Hough then presents the department’s case: that facial recognition will lead to quicker arrests and more efficient solving of crimes – and that besides, many other police departments already use biometric surveillance (and have already lent their services to Milwaukee police). She notes public concerns around facial recognition and civil liberties, and the “very delicate balance between advancement in technology and ensuring we as a department do not violate the rights of all of those in this diverse community.”

The police provide case studies to illustrate how facial recognition have helped them identify criminals and make arrests (for a homicide and a sexual assault). And Hough says the department’s policy will be crafted to ensure no one is arrested solely based on a facial recognition match; per the presentation, “facial recognition does not establish probable cause to arrest or obtain a search warrant. It may generate investigative leads through a combination of automated biometric comparisons and human analysis,” which must be corroborated through additional investigation.

Besides which, it bears repeating that the department already uses facial recognition; it just has to borrow it from neighboring agencies, rather than running its own program. A national investigation in 2021 found that 47 police departments in Wisconsin had used facial recognition software provided by Clearview AI.

Concerns from ACLU include potential for abuse by ICE

However, no number of PowerPoint presentations is likely to assuage the concerns of privacy and civil rights advocates, who note the potential for abuse by federal agencies like Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as alleged issues around bias.

(Biometric testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology has previously found that the majority of facial recognition algorithms are “more likely to misidentify people of color, women and the elderly because their faces tend to appear less frequently in data used to train the algorithms,” though the most accurate algorithms show very low differentials in the Institute’s latest testing.)

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has issued an open letter in response to the decision to contract a facial recognition firm directly. It wants Milwaukee to “impose at least a two-year pause on the adoption of any new surveillance technology, especially facial recognition” and “develop and pass a framework to regulate existing surveillance technology with meaningful opportunities for community input.”

In calling for a two-year pause for more consultation and policy work, the ACLU is effectively calling the police department’s bluff as it boasts of its commitment to public input – and doing so in a fraught political environment.

“We are already seeing how surveillance technology is being weaponized in real time,” the letter says. “Data gathered from facial recognition, automated license plate readers, artificial intelligence, and other surveillance tools are being used by governments, including our own, to target and detain individuals.”

“While we trust that our local leaders and police officers may have good intentions, history reminds us how quickly larger systems can override those intentions.”

The Wisconsin Examiner has an interview with ACLU Wisconsin policy analyst Jon McCray Jones, discussing Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinances.

“Rather than banning surveillance technologies, these ordinances, which have already passed in 24 cities and municipalities nationwide, require that any new or existing technology receive a public hearing, earn approval by the city council, and that an annual report of surveillance gear be created.”

“There’s a lot of power that comes in collecting data,” McCray Jones says. “And we need to know what law enforcement is doing with it just like we need to know what Google is doing with it. We need to know who they’re sharing it with.”

Biometrica to provide two licenses in exchange for booking photos

Biometrica, which is headquartered in Las Vegas, started working with casinos in 1988 and built its clientele in the gambling industry before expanding to law enforcement. It provided background checking software for the International Center for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC)’s efforts to help locate missing children, and has also deployed its tools to help locate missing and murdered Indigenous people. It uses criminal booking photos such as mugshots exclusively. The company does not retain biometric data after a search is made and determined to be negative. It is working with the NAACP on criminal justice reforms.

Per the Journal-Sentinel, in exchange for the initial 2.5 million jail records and accompanying face biometrics, the company is offering Milwaukee police two free search licenses, with additional licenses coming at a cost of $12,000. Police say that, based on the expected volume of searches, the department “shouldn’t need more than two” and “could probably get by with one.”

Police also say they like that Biometrica offers bias training alongside technical training, which the department is going to “look into.”

Asked who owns the ownership rights to images, where the data will actually be kept and who is the ultimate custodian of the data, Hough says she has to check the proposed contract to “see the nuances of that.”

Article Topics

ACLU  |  biometric identification  |  biometric matching  |  Biometrica  |  facial recognition  |  Milwaukee  |  Milwaukee Police Department  |  police