Nine senators have said the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is threatening the privacy and free speech of communities of color and protestors with its use of biometric facial recognition software, demanding answers on the agency’s practices.
In a Sept. 11 letter to Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., along with several colleagues, urged the agency to stop using a biometric mobile phone app known as “Mobile Fortify.” The app allows agents to scan faces and pull up information on individuals captured by their camera.
Data pulled from government databases – and potentially other data purchased from commercial data brokers – is used to power the app, senators said while citing a report from 404 Media that first reported the app.
“Biometric scanning technology — such as facial recognition — is often biased and inaccurate, especially for communities of color, but even when accurate, this type of on-demand surveillance threatens the privacy and free speech rights of everyone in the United States, especially when weaponized against protesters and anyone who speaks out against the federal government’s policies,” wrote the senators.
Beyond capturing a person’s face, the app can also be pointed at fingerprints and can identify individuals based on that after seeking a biometric match through various federal databases.
The group of senators pointed to high risks of bias and errors in the use of the technology, noting that “despite recent advancements, facial recognition tools remain unreliable especially for communities of color which already suffer from increased surveillance and over-policing.”
Specifically, Asian and Black communities have between 10 and 100 times the rate of false positives compared to white communities when identified through the use of facial recognition technology, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Indigenous Americans have the highest rate of false positives across tested demographics.
“Facial recognition tools are likely to be disproportionately weaponized against communities of color,” wrote the senators, pointing to the recent authorization ICE gave certain state and local law enforcement to conduct immigration enforcement activities, which is creating “environments that increase racial profiling.”
The use of facial recognition technology can also create a chilling effect on free speech, with reports and footage showing ICE surveilling protestors using identification technology – such as drone technology used to fly over peaceful protestors in Los Angeles earlier this summer.
“In the absence of meaningful regulation of the government’s use of facial recognition tools, the public is likely to be increasingly subject to ongoing, real-time surveillance,” stated the letter. “This Big Brotherism means that individuals may be less able to move, assemble, or appear in public without the federal government identifying and tracking them.”
The senators requested that Lyons provide them with answers by Oct. 2 on who was contracted to develop and deploy the Mobile Fortify app, when it was first used by ICE officers, whether ICE tested the app’s accuracy, if the app is legal, what practices and policies are used in the technology’s deployment, and whether the agency will cease to use the technology.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tina Smith, D-Minn., also signed the letter.