Accuracy of FBI's Facial Recognition System Questioned

Television shows Law and Order, and Person of Interest make extensive use of facial recognition technology and more.

[From article]
The FBI's facial recognition database has more than 400 million pictures to help its criminal investigations, but lacks adequate safeguards for accuracy and privacy protection, a congressional audit has revealed.
Totalling 411.9 million images, privacy campaigners have slammed the 'unprecedented number of photographs, most of which are of Americans and foreigners who have committed no crimes.'
The huge database - which enables investigators to automatically search images for criminal suspects - 'is far greater than had previously been understood' and raises concerns 'about the risk of innocent Americans being inadvertently swept up in criminal investigations,' said Senator Al Franken, who requested the study.
[. . .]



The FBI's database includes some 30 million criminal mugshots and 140 million images from visa applications by foreign nationals, the GAO found.
It also contains drivers' license pictures from 16 US states and 6.7 million photos from the Defense Department's biometric identification system of individuals detained by US forces abroad, among others.
The FBI's database includes some 30 million criminal mugshots and 140 million images from visa applications by foreign nationals, the GAO found.
[. . .]
The FBI's database includes some 30 million criminal mugshots and 140 million images from visa applications by foreign nationals, the GAO found.
It also contains drivers' license pictures from 16 US states and 6.7 million photos from the Defense Department's biometric identification system of individuals detained by US forces abroad, among others.
The FBI's database includes some 30 million criminal mugshots and 140 million images from visa applications by foreign nationals, the GAO found.
[. . .]



'The accuracy of a system can have a significant impact on individual privacy and civil liberties,' it added, saying that the false positive rate should be analyzed 'prior to the deployment of the system.'
'The report shows that the FBI hasn't done enough to audit its own use of facial recognition technology or that of other law enforcement agencies that partner with the FBI, nor has it taken adequate steps to ensure the technology's accuracy,' Franken said.
Civil liberties advocates said the report was worrisome.
Jennifer Lynch of the EFF, a digital rights campaigner, said 'The FBI has done little to make sure that its search results (which the Bureau calls 'investigative leads') do not include photos of innocent people, according to the report.
[. . .]
'The FBI has conducted only very limited testing to ensure the accuracy of NGI's face recognition capabilities.
'And it has not taken any steps to determine whether the face recognition systems of its external partners—states and other federal agencies—are sufficiently accurate to prevent innocent people from being identified as criminal suspects''
The EFF also says the technology in not accurate.
'As we know from previous research, face recognition is notoriously inaccurate across the board and may also misidentify African Americans and ethnic minorities, young people, and women at higher rates than whites, older people, and men, respectively.'
'Face recognition is a relatively new technology and it's important that not only the FBI but the public be aware of its limitations,' Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union said.
'Errors mean random people could be falsely identified as potential criminals and find themselves coming under the FBI's powerful investigatory microscope.
'That could be not only invading people's privacy, but also exposing them to accusations of wrongdoing.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3645102/Huge-US-facial-recognition-database-flawed-audit.html

Is YOUR picture on the FBI's facial recognition database? Audit of controversial database finds it has over 400 MILLION pictures including driving license and visa applicant images
FBI's database includes some 30 million criminal mugshots, 140 million images from visa applications and drivers' license pictures from 16 states
Senators warned scope of the database far larger than had been thought
Privacy campaigners say scale of the system is 'worrisome'
By AFP and MARK PRIGG FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 09:58 EST, 16 June 2016 | UPDATED: 12:10 EST, 16 June 2016

FBI Merges Civil And Criminal Data Bases For Control of Population

[From article]

For years the FBI maintained it had no interest in scanning fingerprints collected by employers — teachers, lawyers, state and federal workers, even bike messengers now routinely submit fingerprints for employment — but that has now changed.



“For the first time, fingerprints and biographical information sent to the FBI for a background check will be stored and searched right along with fingerprints taken for criminal purposes,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting rights online.



The change, which the FBI revealed quietly in a February 2015 Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), means that if you ever have your fingerprints taken for licensing or for a background check, they will most likely end up living indefinitely in the FBI’s NGI database. They’ll be searched thousands of times a day by law enforcement agencies across the country—even if your prints didn’t match any criminal records when they were first submitted to the system.
The EFF believes the change is “part of an ever-growing movement toward cataloguing information on everyone in America—and a movement that won’t end with fingerprints.”
Now that the FBI has added a face recognition component to its database, employers and state and local governments will be urged to submit photographs along with fingerprints.
A database of photos will make it easier for the agency and the government to track people as they move about, the EFF explains.
[. . .]



The government’s expanding biometric database — coupled with the NSA’s effort to surveil all personal communication — will further enable the technocratic police state now going into place.
The government is less interested in catching criminals than it is in controlling the populace, especially a politically active populace that may threaten its monopoly of power.

http://www.infowars.com/fbi-merges-criminal-and-civil-fingerprint-database/

by KURT NIMMO

INFOWARS.COM

SEPTEMBER 22, 2015
FBI MERGES CRIMINAL AND CIVIL FINGERPRINT DATABASE
Feds building huge biometric database on all citizens

US Government Continues Militarization Of Local Police, Now Using Facial Recognition

[From article]
Facial recognition software, which American military and intelligence agencies used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify potential terrorists, is being eagerly adopted by dozens of police departments around the country to pursue drug dealers, prostitutes and other conventional criminal suspects. But because it is being used with few guidelines and with little oversight or public disclosure, it is raising questions of privacy and concerns about potential misuse.
Law enforcement officers say the technology is much faster than fingerprinting at identifying suspects, although it is unclear how much it is helping the police make arrests.
When Aaron Harvey was stopped by the police here in 2013 while driving near his grandmother’s house, an officer not only searched his car, he said, but also took his photograph and ran it through the software to try to confirm his identity and determine whether he had a criminal record.
Eric Hanson, a retired firefighter, had a similar experience last summer. Stopped by the police after a dispute with a man he said was a prowler, he was ordered to sit on a curb, he said, while officers took his photo with an iPad and ran it through the same facial recognition software. The officers also used a cotton swab to collect a DNA sample from the inside of his cheek.
[. . .]



County documents show that over 33 days in January and February, 26 San Diego law enforcement agencies used the software to try to identify people on more than 20,600 occasions — although officers found a match to criminal records only about 25 percent of the time.
Lieutenant Wahl said the department was not aware of any complaints about the software or about the policy of collecting DNA samples that Mr. Hanson and others have described.
[. . .]



“It is not as if there is the identification of a specific crime problem; they are simply collecting a lot of information that could impact a lot of completely innocent people,” said Michael German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and a former F.B.I. agent. “There is very little oversight on the local level, and little concern from the federal agencies providing the grants.”
Facial recognition technology was first developed in the 1960s, but only recently became accurate enough for widespread use. It is among an array of technologies, including StingRay tracking devices and surveillance aircraft with specialized cameras, that were used in overseas wars but have found their way into local law enforcement.
[. . .]



But people who are not criminal suspects are included in the database, and the error rate for the software is as high as 20 percent — meaning the authorities could misidentify millions of people.
Among the cities that use facial recognition technology are New York and Chicago, which has linked it to 25,000 surveillance cameras in an effort to fight street crime.
[. . .]



Mr. Harvey, 27, remains upset about what happened to him. He said that when he refused to consent to having his picture taken, the officer boasted that he could do so anyway.
“He said, ‘We’re going to do this either legally or illegally,’ and pulled me out of the car,” Mr. Harvey said.
Mr. Harvey, who is African-American, said the San Diego Police had stopped him as a suspected gang member more than 50 times because his neighborhood, Lincoln Park, is among the city’s most violent.
He said he had been told he was in a gang database, even though he has never been a gang member. He recently spent nearly a year in jail on gang conspiracy charges that were dismissed in March. “I don’t know how good a gang member I could have been, not having a criminal record,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/us/facial-recognition-software-moves-from-overseas-wars-to-local-police.html?_r=1

Facial Recognition Software Moves From Overseas Wars to Local Police
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
AUG. 12, 2015

German Scientists Develop Facial Recognition Technology For Low Level Light And Darkness

© Jung Yeon-je / Reuters
[From article]
German researchers have developed a new technology that can identify a person in poor lighting or even in absolute darkness thus potentially solving one of the main issues of the modern face recognition systems.
Today’s facial recognition systems are based on matching clean and well-lit photos taken in the broad light. This poses a problem for law enforcement and security services when their object is in the shade.
However, a group of German scientists claim to have found a solution to this as they develop a new type of face-recognition system that analyzes a person’s thermal signature instead of relying on traditional methods.

http://www.rt.com/news/311003-new-technology-face-recognition/

Out of Shadows: New tech allows face recognition in utter darkness
Published time: 28 Jul, 2015 18:31

Voice and Speech Recognition Software Will Make Surveillance Tough To Avoid

What happens when criminals who work with and for the government can eavesdrop on any conversation?

[From article]
The defeat of the U.S.A. Freedom Act means that the National Security Agency can continue to collect meta-data on cell phone users, which can be used to pinpoint location. Depending on where you talking to your device, whether in public or in private, a judge may rule you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But if you’re worried about your device becoming a listening ear for the government, so, too, could the very air around you.
[. . .]
Scientists have actually created a microphone that is just one molecule of dibenzoterrylene (which changes color depending on pitch.) Devices that pickup noise or vibrations can be as small as a grain of rice.
Continued advancement in the field of device miniaturization could one day allow for the dispersal of extremely small but capable listening machines, one of the uses a future technology sometimes called “Smart Dust.”
[. . .]




The nascent opportunity to turn the physical world into a landscape for surveillance is a theme that’s showing up with growing frequency in scholarly defense literature, such as this September 2014 paper out of National Defense University’s Center for Technology and National Security Policy, which heralds the future opportunities that the Internet of Things provides for the “monitoring of individuals and populations using sensors.”
[. . .]
Today, companies and law enforcement agencies routinely collect so-called voiceprints on customers and suspects. In 2012, the FBI announced a technology called VoiceGrid to store voice data. Today, the Federal Police in Mexico have a database of more than a million voice records taken during criminal proceedings and arrests. But the number of voice prints potentially available to law enforcement or the intelligence community surpasses 65 million by some recent estimates.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/12/what-happens-when-spies-can-eavesdrop-any-conversation/100142/

What Happens When Spies Can Eavesdrop on Any Conversation?
Patrick Tucker
December 1, 2014

FBI Facial Recognition System Fully Operational

Complete: FBI detectives can now use the Next Generation Identification system to recognise a criminal in any crowd using a database of more than 52 million images. It has taken three years to develop the system
[From article]
The FBI's facial-recognition surveillance system that can pick out suspects from a crowd is now 'fully operational', officials announced today.
Programmers have been working for three years to install the Next Generation Identification system in 18,000 bureaus across the country and compile more than eight million mug shots.
By 2015, detectives will be able to use its in-built Interstate Photo System (IPS) to trace at least 52 million people - including innocent citizens.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2756641/FBI-facial-recognition-database-pick-crowd-CCTV-shots-fully-operational.html

FBI facial recognition database that can pick you out from a crowd in CCTV shots is now 'fully operational'
Developers have spent 3 years on Next Generation Identification system
Today they have finished installing it in 18,000 bureaus across the USA
Detectives will be able to search 52m faces by 2015, it currently holds 8m
Critics warn the recognition system is ineffective and has low success rate
The program will replace fingerprint system, it is just Phase 1 of many
By MIA DE GRAAF and MARK PRIGG FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 11:26 EST, 15 September 2014 | UPDATED: 12:41 EST, 15 September 2014

Cameras Everywhere, 500 in NYC Subway

[From article]
People pointing cameras in New York are regarded as suspicious and the facial recognition images of them from the civilian CCTV are fed into a data centre run by U.S. firm Abraxas.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2187602/U-S-Government-secretly-spying-using-civilian-security-cameras-say-Wikileaks.html

U.S. government is secretly spying on EVERYONE using civilian security cameras, say Wikileaks
Cameras use facial recognition to log people's activity
Details released by Wikileaks which has now been hacked in cyber attack
Disturbing echoes of CIA officials in hit film The Bourne Identity
By RICK DEWSBURY
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 04:13 EST, 13 August 2012 | UPDATED: 08:22 EST, 13 August 2012

Face Recognition Computers Already In Use

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/26/just-a-face-in-a-crowd-scans-pick-up-id-personal-d/?page=1

Just a face in a crowd? Scans pick up ID, personal data
Law, marketing tool raise privacy issues
By Sarah Freishtat-
The Washington Times
Thursday, July 26, 2012

Woman Disfigured By Acid Attack Gets No Help From Government

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2173343/Acid-attack-victim-pleads-death.html

Acid attack victim pleads for death
By RITIKA CHOPRA
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 17:46 EST, 13 July 2012 | UPDATED: 18:46 EST, 13 July 2012

Facial Recognition Cameras Will Become Common

[From article]
"Once the stuff of science fiction and high-tech crime fighting, facial recognition technology has become one of the newest tools in marketing, even though privacy concerns abound.
The Venetian resort, hotel and casino in Las Vegas has started using it on digital displays to tailor suggestions for restaurants, clubs and entertainment to passersby."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facial-recognition-20110821,0,7327487.story

Advertisers start using facial recognition to tailor pitches
By Shan Li and David Sarno, Los Angeles Times
August 21, 2011
Los Angeles Times

Facebook Facial Recognition Dangerous

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/159537/20110608/facebook-facial-recognition.htm

Why Facebook Facial Recognition Should Scare You
COLUMN: Facebook threatens to make your face your identity and connect it to any other information you give to the social network.
By Joe Romaine
June 8, 2011 12:25 PM EDT