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ICE Used Facial Recognition to Mine State Driver's License Databases
WASHINGTON — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have mined state driver's license databases using facial recognition technology, analyzing millions of motorists' photos without their knowledge.
In at least three states that offer driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants, ICE officials have requested to comb through state repositories of license photos, according to newly released documents. At least two of those states, Utah and Vermont, complied, searching their photos for matches, those records show.
In the third state, Washington, agents authorized administrative subpoenas of the Department of Licensing to conduct a facial recognition scan of all photos of license applicants, though it was unclear whether the state carried out the searches. In Vermont, agents only had to file a paper request that was later approved by Department of Motor Vehicles employees.
The documents, obtained through public records requests by Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology and first reported on by The Washington Post, mark the first known instance of ICE using facial recognition technology to scan state driver's license databases, including photos of legal residents and citizens.
Privacy experts like Harrison Rudolph, an associate at the center, which released the documents to The New York Times, said the records painted a new picture of a practice that should be shut down.
[...] He continued: "These states have never told undocumented people that when they apply for a driver's license they are also turning over their face to ICE. That is a huge bait and switch."
The use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement is far from new or rare. Over two dozen states allow law enforcement officials to request such searches against their databases of driver's licenses, a practice that has drawn criticism from lawmakers and advocates who say that running facial recognition searches against millions of photos of unwitting, law-abiding citizens is a major privacy violation.
The F.B.I., for example, has tapped state law enforcement's troves of photos — primarily those for driver's licenses and visa applications — for nearly a decade, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The bureau has run over 390,000 searches through databases that collectively hold over 640 million photos, F.B.I. officials said.
[...] The Seattle Times reported last year that Washington State's Department of Licensing turned over undocumented immigrants' driver's license applications to ICE officials, a practice its governor, Jay Inslee, pledged to stop. And a lawsuit in Vermont filed by an activist group cited documents obtained under public records law that showed that the state Department of Motor Vehicles forwarded names, photos, car registrations and other information on migrant workers to ICE, Vermont Public Radio reported this year.
The relationship between Washington's Department of Licensing and ICE officials may prove to be particularly interesting to privacy experts because of a law the State Legislature passed in 2012 stipulating that the department could use a facial recognition matching system for driver's licenses only when authorized by a court order, something ICE did not provide.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @08:20PM (5 children)
You are unhinged. My friend recently got to pay 5 grand out of pocket cause an illegal rear-ended her car and tried to run. They caught him, but the insurance company said to persue him through the courts to recoup her out of pocket costs. Yeah good luck with that! She is a legal immigrant from Guatemala BTW, and she too now wants a shinny fucking wall, 50 ft tall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @08:39PM (1 child)
yep. we either enforce the borders and have a country or we don't. "enforcing the border" does not mean letting them in and giving them a court date.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @08:45PM
replying to yourself is stooooopid
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Monday July 08 2019, @10:16PM (1 child)
That's rough for your friend but they have drawn the wrong conclusion. Building a wall won't fix the fact that your insurance system is broken.
Where I live, if an uninsured party damages my car, my insurance company fixes the car and then goes after the uninsured party for costs. (In fact, my car gets repaired even if an unknown party does the damage.) That is; after all; what insurance is for - to protect me from large out-of-pocket expenses. Looking at the wider picture it also ensures that when I run into a Rolls-Royce, they get their vehicle repaired (and I don't go bankrupt). It also means that when someone damages my car and runs away, I don't have to endanger life and limb to apprehend someone to squeeze for cash. The way your insurance system is set up just seems so... uncivilised.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @10:32PM
That's because you have chosen to pay your insurance company to take care of collision damage, regardless of who caused it. If another person is liable, of course they will go after someone they can recover money from.
Collision insurance is expensive and optional, it primarily covers damage you caused to your own car. Springing in for the damage a driver operating illegally without insurance is secondary. What you are talking about the Rolls Royce is liability insurance, covering damage you caused to other's property.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @12:30AM
A friend of mine was out cruzing and protecting "Merika!" when he accidently rear-ended a vehicle driven by an illegal alien. Must've been a coyote, since my friend found $5000 on the body, and then got his truck fixed for free by the ICE "Legal Resident's Re-imbursement" program! Amazing the things you can read on the internets!