Facial Recognition Technologies Spreading Rapidly

Photos have long been used for identification and security purposes. However, indications are that advances in facial recognition are fast outpacing the attendant privacy concerns. 

Although there are myriads of hidden cameras placed strategically on every major street and within buildings, there is seemingly little public comfort that it's all necessary and that there are adequate measures to minimize the risk of abuse.

Is facial recognition out of control? Are the 'good guys' having their rights and privacies violated through excessive monitoring and poorly-controlled surveillance system data?

A prominent case study was recently presented by reporters for the Baltimoresun.com. It involved a five-year-old program in Maryland that lets police compare images of unidentified criminal suspects with millions of motor vehicle records -- using highly advanced facial recognition software.

The program has come under fire from civil liberties advocates, who say such programs lack transparency and infringe on privacy rights.

According to state and federal data, Maryland is one of at least five states that has provided access to driver's licenses, local police mug shots and other corrections records to the FBI. A dozen other states provide driver's license photographs only. Other states have laws prohibiting the use of facial recognition.

Police have used the Maryland Image Repository System with little fanfare since 2011. But the program has attracted increased scrutiny since the American Civil Liberties Union in California released documents last week showing the system was used to monitor protesters during the unrest and rioting in Baltimore last year. 

That followed other recent disclosures about law enforcement in Baltimore adopting clandestine technologies, including cellphone tracking and aerial surveillance.

But just how extensive or pervasive are these 'big-brother' type systems? in population scope terms? Liam Tung of zdnet.com recently quoted new research showing that 117 million US adults - about half the adult population - have their faces on FBI and police databases.

The research report by Georgetown University's Law Center on Privacy & Technology distinguishes between using face recognition to check the ID of someone being legally held, as opposed to scans of people simply walking by surveillance cameras. 

The report, titled 'The Perpetual Line-up: Unregulated police face recognition in America', also concedes that facial recognition is a mature technology and is used legitimately to combat serious and violent crimes.

However, as Tung noted, since there are virtually no rules for its use across 52 agencies, the technology can also be misused. The group has called for a far higher threshold on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement, akin to the rules set out in the US Wiretap Act.

"A few agencies have instituted meaningful protections to prevent the misuse of the technology. In many more cases, it is out of control," the report's authors wrote.

According to the study, up to 30 states in the US allow law enforcement to run facial recognition search to match against driver's license photo ID databases. Additionally, 16 states allow the FBI to run the searches against these databases, allowing it to build a biometric network consisting largely of law-abiding citizens.

Policy-wise, the researchers make a distinction between targeted and persistent use of facial recognition.

"A face-recognition search conducted in the field to verify the identity of someone who has been legally stopped or arrested is different, in principle and effect, than an investigatory search of an ATM photo against a driver's license database, or continuous, real-time scans of people walking by a surveillance camera. 

The former is targeted and public. The latter are generalized and invisible," the researchers contend.

Also, typically, if police visit a person's home and request that they attend a witness line-up, the person has an opportunity to say 'no'. There's no such choice under a virtual line-up where a person is identified not by other people, but by an algorithm.

The report notes that no algorithm in use by law enforcement has been vetted for racial bias. That measure has not been undertaken despite a 2012 FBI study acknowledging that facial recognition was five to 10 percent less accurate on African Americans than Caucasians, risking singling out innocent African Americans as suspects.

The Georgetown researchers also found that of the 52 agencies that use facial recognition, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is the only one that has a policy banning officers from using the technology to track protesters. Only nine agencies had audited their officers' face-recognition searches for improper use.

The researchers have recommended limiting FBI facial-recognition search using license ID photos to investigations of serious crimes and only after receiving approval from a state. Photo IDs make up 185 million of the reference photos in the FBI's FACE Services database, which contains a total of 411.9 million photos.

Meanwhile, according to researchers, police usage should require legislative approval. Tung concludes that no doubt these suggestions are likely to be met with resistance given that law-enforcement agencies have looked to facial recognition to accelerate investigation times.

But their resistance is likely to be strongly countered by privacy advocates. As John Dunn for nakedsecurity.sophos.com recently put it:

"We know very little about these systems. We don't know how they impact privacy and civil liberties. We don't know how they address accuracy problems. What happens if the system misidentifies a suspect and an innocent person is arrested?

Nobody knows, apparently. States have no rules or regulations governing the use of real-time or static facial data, or whether this data can be accessed for less serious crimes that don't require a warrant. 

It's almost as if law enforcement has discovered a new tool to make its job easier but wants to use it on the quiet, with as little fuss as possible".

Dunn further observed that the Center on Privacy believes the situation demands that legal checks and balances be introduced and that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) be funded to test the accuracy of software. Failure to do so could rapidly reduce the privacy of public spaces for ordinary citizens.

So far, discussions between privacy organizations and business groups on the issue of facial recognition haven't exactly been encouraging for civil liberty advocates.

Neither has the legal system. Kevin Collier for vocativ.com took note of remarks made by Clare Garvie, an associate at the Center on Privacy and Technology (CPT):

"Looking at the sum total of what we found, there have been no laws that comprehensively regulate face recognition technology, and there's really no case law either...So we find ourselves having to rely on the agencies that are using that technology to rein it in. But what we found is that not every system -- by a long shot -- has a use policy."

These concerns are not just limited to the United States. According to dw.com, leaked documents indicate that Germany is reportedly about to hop onto the surveillance bandwagon.

The German Interior Ministry is said to want to install facial recognition video surveillance in the country's airports and train stations. 

The technology is part of a wider plan to expand video surveillance across public spaces in Germany that was revealed on Wednesday in a draft law that the cabinet intends to rubberstamp in November.

The ministry admitted it was currently in talks with the federal police and rail operator Deutsche Bahn "to test the use of intelligent video analysis technology in one pilot train station." But the ministry added that it could not yet say when the scheme would begin, or what the "implementation possibilities of these systems" are.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere wants the cabinet to rubberstamp his draft law in November. He indicated in August that German security forces would start using facial recognition technology to find terrorist suspects.

"Private citizens are able to photograph someone and then use facial recognition software to find out on the internet whether they've just seen a celebrity or a politician," he told the 'Bild am Sonntag' newspaper. "I would like to use that kind of facial recognition software in video cameras in airports and train stations," he added.

De Maiziere's new draft law, revealed by the "Ruhr Nachrichten" newspaper on Wednesday, also includes plans to increase surveillance especially in privately-run public areas, such as shopping malls, sports venues, and car parks.

The draft mentions recent violent incidents in Germany - specifically a shooting spree in Munich and a bombing in Ansbach, which happened within days of each other in July - as the main justification for the new measures. 

But opposition politicians say that video surveillance is being sold as an easy solution whose security benefits are "highly doubtful."

"This is hardly any more than a placebo to keep the public calm," said Konstantin von Notz, Green party deputy parliamentary leader, in a statement. "Video surveillance can help to investigate crimes in retrospect, but the technology can't prevent crimes. Only good police work can do that."

He added that these measures only "create more dangers for basic rights" - especially in the case of so-called "intelligent video technology."

There are yet other indications as well that it will not be smooth sailing for Maiziere. According to German data privacy lawyer Christian Solmecke, facial recognition represents a "massive invasion on the right to informational self-determination, and there is simply no legal basis for its use," later adding that any law that allowed this to happen would violate the German constitution.

The Interior Ministry acknowledged that there may be legal obstacles to overcome, but, in its answer to the Green party, argued that "to what extent the potential use of intelligent video surveillance systems will require a constitutional re-assessment depends, as far as the government is concerned, on the configuration and actual use of that technology."

Whatever the case, there is seemingly no stopping the spread of facial recognition globally. As Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of the Center on Privacy & Technology reportedly voiced: "In the future, we might see a world where every face is scanned."