Facial Recognition Softw... Ce - The New York Times

8/12/2015
Facial Recognition Software Moves From Overseas Wars to Local Police - The New York Times
http://nyti.ms/1NqQtsX
U.S.
Facial Recognition Software Moves From

Overseas Wars to Local Police
ByTIMOTHYWILLIAMS
AUG. 12, 2015
SAN DIEGO 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 grandmothers 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
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cotton swab to collect a DNA sample from the inside of his cheek.
Neither man was arrested. Neither had consented to being photographed.
Both said officers had told them that they were using facial recognition
technology.
I was thinking, Why are you taking pictures of me, doing this to me?
said Mr. Hanson, 58, who has no criminal record. I felt like my identity was
being stolen. Im a straight-up, no lie, cheat or steal guy, and I get treated like
a criminal.
Lt. Scott Wahl, a spokesman for the 1,900-member San Diego Police
Department, said the department does not require police officers to file a
report when they use the facial recognition technology but do not make an
arrest. The department has no record of the stops involving Mr. Hanson and
Mr. Harvey, and Lieutenant Wahl said that he did not know about the
incidents but that they could have happened.
It is a test product for the region that weve allowed officers to use, he
said of facial recognition software and the hand-held devices the police use to
take pictures. We dont even know how many are out there in the region.
He said that until June 19, his department did not have a written policy
regulating facial recognition software and only recently began training officers
on its lawful use. Before then, he said, there were interim regional guidelines
and training available.
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.
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Hanson and others have described.

The department uses the technology judiciously, Lieutenant Wahl said.
We dont just drive around taking peoples picture and start swabbing them,
he said.
Others say misuse is common.
I get a call about facial recognition maybe twice a month, said Victor
Manuel Torres, a San Diego civil rights lawyer. The complaint is always that
they did it and didnt get permission. The police put me in cuffs and Im on
the curb, and they pull out an iPad and are taking pictures.
The Police Department, which the Justice Department recently
determined to have a history of serious misconduct, has also been found to
disproportionately stop and search African-Americans. But there is no similar
racial breakdown for facial recognition checks, in part because the department
does not keep the data.
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.
The software can identify 16,000 points on a persons face to determine
the distance between the eyes or the shape of the lips, for instance and
compare them with thousands of similar points in police booking or other
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photos at a rate of more than one million faces a second.

The technology is so new that experts say they are unaware of major legal
challenges. In some cities, though, a backlash is stirring.
In Northern California, the Oakland City Council, under pressure from
residents and civil liberties advocates, scaled back plans this year for a
federally financed center that would have linked surveillance equipment
around the city, including closed-circuit cameras, gunshot microphones and
license plate readers. It also formed a committee to limit the use of this
equipment and to develop privacy standards, like how long data may be kept
and who will have access to it.
The authorities in Boston tested facial recognition technology but decided
in 2013 not to adopt it, saying it crossed an ethical line. The software had been
linked to surveillance cameras to secretly scan the faces of thousands of people
at outdoor concerts in the city center. The images had then been fed into
software capable of analyzing them.
I dont want people to think were always spying on them, said William
B. Evans, Bostons police commissioner.
Yet the F.B.I. is pushing ahead with its $1 billion Next Generation
Identification program, in which the agency will gather data like fingerprints,
iris scans and photographs, as well as information collected through facial
recognition software. That software is capable of analyzing drivers license
photos and images from the tens of thousands of surveillance cameras around
the country. The F.B.I. system will eventually be made accessible to more than
18,000 local, state, federal and international law enforcement agencies.
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.
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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.
In many ways, though, San Diego County is at the forefront.
Here, beat cops, detectives and even school police officers have been
using hand-held devices to create a vast database of tens of thousands of
photos of people like Mr. Harvey and Mr. Hanson some suspected of
committing crimes, others not usually without the persons consent.
Not everyone is opposed to such programs. Last year, Tom Northcutt, a
San Diego property manager, took an iPhone photo of a man moments before
the man struck him in the arm with a two-by-four and fled. Mr. Northcutt,
who did not know the aggressor, immediately sent the image to the police by
email.
Less than 10 minutes later, a detective matched the man to a booking
photograph of a suspect, who was arrested and later convicted of assault.
It felt good knowing that they could do that, Mr. Northcutt said.
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, Were 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 citys 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
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conspiracy charges that were dismissed in March. I dont know how good a
gang member I could have been, not having a criminal record, he said.
Mr. Hanson, who is white and lives in the citys upscale Ocean Beach
neighborhood, said his treatment by officers had been as intrusive as it was
frightening.
Im not a lawyer, he said, but they didnt appear to be following the
law.
Correction:August12,2015
An earlier version of this article contained outdated information on
San Diegos use of facial recognition technology. The department
issued a written policy on the technologys use on June 19 and
recently began officer training. It does not lack a written policy or
training. An earlier version also misidentified some of the
information collected through the F.B.I.s Next Generation
biometric program. It will collect fingerprints, iris scans and other
data. It will not collect DNA samples or voice identification records.
AversionofthisarticleappearsinprintonAugust13,2015,onpageA1oftheNewYorkedition
withtheheadline:PoliceDepts.UsingIDToolHonedinWar.
2015TheNewYorkTimesCompany
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8/12/2015

Facial Recognition Software Moves From

AUG. 12, 2015

SAN DIEGO Facial recognition software, which American military and

Hanson and others have described.

photos at a rate of more than one million faces a second.

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