Live mobile facial recognition gains popularity among US, UK law enforcement

Operator-initiated facial recognition (OIFR) is gaining popularity in the U.S. and UK as a tool for identifying possible illegal immigrants or criminal suspects in public.

OIFR is a subset of live facial recognition, with images captured of specific individuals in a particular interaction, rather than of all people in a certain place during the deployment period, as with the UK’s live facial recognition vans.

Officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been recorded using the Mobile Fortify app to confirm whether people they approach are in government immigration databases, 404 Media reports.

The videos show masked agents from law enforcement organizations like ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) requesting names and citizenship status from people, apparently prompted in some cases by the color of their skin, and photographing them with the app if they do not produce ID documents.

The encounters evoke the fears of a “papers please” society that have been awakened in the UK by the government’s proposal for a mandatory national digital ID.

Three senators from the Democratic Party wrote to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons in September to ask about Mobile Fortify’s surveillance implications and Constitutionality. Bennie G. Thompson, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee and another Democrat, told 404 in a statement that “ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”

Mobile Fortify compares the face biometrics in images captured against over 200 million images, according to the report, from State Department, CBP, FBO and state databases. DHS’ IDENT database holds biometric records for 270 million people. More data could soon be added from commercial data brokers, going by an explicit mention of LexisNexis in Mobile Fortify training materials.

Welsh police OIFR wins national policing award

South Wales Police and Gwent Police have won a UK national policing award from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) for their operator initiated facial recognition app, which is powered by NEC algorithms.

The two forces were recognized in the “Innovation in Embedding Science, Technology or Digital Solutions in Frontline Policing” category. South Wales Police note their apprehension of a person wanted under a European arrest warrant for 12 years based on a match against a 13 year-old photo as an example of the effectiveness of OIFR.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  ICE - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement  |  mobile biometrics  |  Mobile Fortify  |  NeoFace  |  Operator Initiated Facial Recognition (OIFR)  |  police  |  real-time biometrics