Feds scan driver’s license photos for facial-recognition gold mine
Without Americans’ knowledge, ICE, FBI use state databases as surveillance infrastructure
WASHINGTON — Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have turned state driver’s license databases into a facial-recognition gold mine, scanning through hundreds of millions of Americans’ photos without their knowledge or consent, newly released documents show.
Thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents and emails over the past five years, obtained through public-records requests by Georgetown University researchers and provided to the Washington Post, reveal that federal investigators have turned state Department of Motor Vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.
Police have long had access to fingerprints, DNA and other “biometric data” taken from criminal suspects. But the DMV records contain the photos of the majority of a state’s residents, most of whom have never been charged with a crime.
Neither Congress nor state legislatures have authorized the development of such a system, and growing numbers of Democratic and Republican lawmakers are criticizing the technology as a dangerous, pervasive and error-prone surveillance tool.
“Law enforcement’s access of state databases,” particularly DMV databases, is “often done in the
with no consent,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat who
chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said in a statement.
Since 2011, the FBI has logged more than 390,000 facial-recognition searches of federal and local dataso
bases, including state DMV databases, the Government Accountability Office said last month, and the records show that federal investigators have forged daily working relationships with DMV officials.
San Francisco and Somerville, Mass., have banned their police and public agencies from using facial-recognition software, citing concerns about governmental overreach and a breach of public trust, and the subject is being hotly debated in Washington. On Wednesday, officials with the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection and the Secret Service are expected to testify at a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security about their agencies’ use of the technology.
The records detailed the regular use of facial recognition to track down suspects in low-level crimes. They alshadows
underscore the conflicts between the laws of some states and the federal push to find and deport unauthorized immigrants. Utah, Vermont and Washington allow unauthorized immigrants to obtain full driver’s licenses or more-limited permits known as driving privilege cards, and ICE agents have run facial-recognition searches on those DMV databases.
Lawmakers in Texas and other states introduced bills this year that would extend driving privileges to unauthorized immigrants. Some of those states already allow the FBI to scan driver’s license photos, while others, such as Florida and New York, are negotiating with the FBI over access, according to the GAO.
“The state has told (unauthorized immigrants), has encouraged them, to submit that information. To me, it’s an insane breach of trust to
then turn around and allow ICE access to that,” said Clare Garvie, a senior associate with the Georgetown law school’s Center on Privacy and Technology who led the research.
An ICE spokesman declined to answer questions.
Asked to comment, the FBI referred to the congressional testimony last month of Deputy Assistant Director Kimberly Del Greco, who said facial-recognition technology was critical “to preserve our nation’s freedoms, ensure our liberties are protected and preserve our security.” The agency has said in the past that while facialrecognition searches can provide helpful leads, agents are expected to verify the findings and secure definitive proof before pursuing arrests or criminal charges.
Twenty-one states, including Texas, allow federal agencies such as the FBI to scan driver’s license photos, GAO records show. The agreements stipulate some rules for the searches, including that each must be relevant to a criminal investigation.
Civil rights advocates have said the inaccuracies of facial recognition pose a heightened danger of misidentification and false arrests. The software’s precision is highly dependent on a number of factors, including the lighting of a subject’s face and the quality of the image, and research has shown that the technology performs less accurately on people with darker skin.
“The public doesn’t have a way of controlling what information the government has on them,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, a senior organizer for the advocacy group Mijente. “And now there’s this rapidly advancing technology, with very few guidelines and protections for people, putting all of this information at their fingertips in a very scary way.”
The records, which include thousands of emails and official documents from federal agencies, as well as Utah, Vermont and Washington state, show how easy it is for a federal investigator to tap into a state DMV’s database. While some of the searches were made on the strength of federal subpoenas or court orders, many requests involved nothing more than an email to a DMV official with the target’s “probe photo” attached. The official would then search the driver’s license database and provide details of any possible matches.
The search capability was offered not just to help identify suspects, but also to detect possible witnesses, victims, bodies, innocent bystanders and others not charged with crimes.