{"id":3004,"date":"2014-09-18T02:35:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T02:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:42","slug":"fbi-facial-recognition-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/fbi-facial-recognition-software\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI Facial Recognition Software"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, the FBI announced<\/a> the full operational capacity of new facial recognition software, the Next Generation Identification System (NGI). The FBI press release indicates the system was developed \u201cto expand the Bureau\u2019s biometric identification capabilities, ultimately replacing the FBI\u2019s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) in addition to adding new services and capabilities.\u201d The $1 billion<\/a> dollar program also features the \u201crap back\u201d function, \u201cwhich will allow police to continuously monitor if ex-convicts, teachers or \u2018individuals holding positions of trust\u2019 break the law.\u201d
\nHowever, some civil liberty groups fear that this system will infringe too much on citizen privacy. For example, the Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a> (EFF) fears the database will include criminal as well as non-criminal images. The Foundation claims that pursuant to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the FBI will have access to 52 million images by the end of 2015, including 4.3 million images taken for non-criminal purposes.<\/p>\n

EFF predicts \u201cif your employer requires you to submit a photo as part of your background check, your face image could be searched\u2014and you could be implicated as a criminal suspect\u2014just by virtue of having that image in the non-criminal file.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While this seems like a scary prospect, how likely is it that you could be implicated as a criminal suspect?
\nEFF claims<\/a> that the system will only have an 85% of correctly identifying a suspect, as compared with Facebook\u2019s Deepface recognition system with a 97% accuracy rate. However, the FBI argues<\/a> that, because the \u201ccandidate list\u201d produced is an \u201cinvestigative lead\u201d and not an identification, there is by definition no chance that an innocent person will be falsely identified by the system.\u00a0 Shahar Belkin, CTO of FST Biometrics, says that the FBI cannot match Facebook\u2019s capabilities<\/a> partially because of the \u201cquality of the pictures the FBI is using. Belkin says facial recognition systems typically need to photograph your face straight-on, no more than 15 degrees off the center axis.\u201d In fact, \u201cFacebook and the Manhattan district attorney\u2019s office are in a bitter fight<\/a> over the government\u2019s demand for the contents of hundreds of Facebook accounts.\u201d
\nSo where does this leave someone like me? I have an unusual last name that a prospective employer would probably identify from a perfunctory Google image search anyway. Should I even bother to adjust the privacy settings on my Facebook account? Are success stories, like the FBI capture of a 14-year fugitive<\/a> Neil Stammer with the help of this software worth the possible infringement on my privacy? The FBI\u2019s Brian Edgell, unit chief of the implementation and transition unit, NGI, says that the \u201cNGI did not require the creation of any new authority for the FBI<\/a>. The FBI had all the authority to do everything I\u2019ve already described. We just didn\u2019t have the technology to do it or the business process to go along with it, so now we are matching up to our authorities to do these things.\u201d Maybe this type of facial recognition software is simply \u201cthe new normal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, the FBI announced the full operational capacity of new facial recognition software, the Next Generation Identification System (NGI). The FBI press release indicates the system was developed \u201cto expand the Bureau\u2019s biometric identification capabilities, ultimately replacing the FBI\u2019s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) in addition to adding new services and capabilities.\u201d The …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3005,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7455,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions\/7455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}