Biometrica pushes back on alleged privacy risks, biometric data concerns

A controversy brewing over the prospective adoption of a public security system from Biometrica that uses facial recognition in Milwaukee appears to have been made a little more potent with a dash of confusion.

The deal was presented in local press as a trade of facial recognition software for templates, naturally calling to mind images of control rooms linking a network of CCTV cameras and their footage to all records available to local police and raising questions about what Biometrica might do with the acquired data. The reality is more nuanced.

Biometrica describes itself as a big data company, rather than a biometrics provider, and operates the UMbRA database. The database is composed of law enforcement records of people with convictions, felony warrants, and reported missing, and which the company says is only used in accordance with strict guidelines. The system uses a third-party facial recognition service to match probe images with deidentified records in the database, and sends the match for a human review, discarding all other images. The reviewer adds context, like whether the person matched has been found at a school, and decides whether to issue an alert.

The system does not use standard CCTV cameras, but rather dedicated sensors Biometrica calls Real-Time Threat Identification System (RTIS) and Real-Time Victim Identification System (RVIS). They perform face detection at the network edge and capture single-frame images for comparison. This aligns the system with privacy-by-design architecture and keeps it compliant with GDPR, the company told Biometric Update in an email.

The proposed arrangement is in fact of two licenses for the service in return for access to Milwaukee Police Department booking data. In other words, Biometrica does not plan to train a face biometrics model with the mugshots, the company says, because it does not get direct access to the data or develop face biometrics algorithms.

Eleven of Milwaukee’s 15 district alders sent a letter opposing the system’s adoption to MPD Chief Jeffrey Norman in May, as noted by Wisconsin Public Radio, expressing concern about threats to privacy, civil liberties, bias and public perception of law enforcement. Their opposition was apparently not assuaged by a presentation from MPD during an April municipal meeting which focussed on the facial recognition aspect of Biometrica’s service, but may not have made clear to the alders that the system will not store records or images of anyone who has not been matched to a previously-confirmed as a felony convict, a wanted suspect or a missing person.

Milwaukee’s Equal Rights Commission has scheduled a discussion of the proposal for today.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometric matching  |  Biometrica  |  biometrics  |  face detection  |  facial recognition  |  Milwaukee  |  Milwaukee Police Department  |  police  |  real-time biometrics