#168: FBI and Facial Recognition

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2017

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Would you agree to stand in a police line-up if you never committed a crime? Probably not. But if you have a drivers’ license, you might be in a perpetual, digital line-up. 18 states allow the FBI to scan your license photo, and many states allow local law enforcement to do the same. One in two American adults — that’s about 125 million people — are in the FBI’s facial recognition database, and most, if not all, searches are conducted without a warrant. Evan is joined by Alvaro Bedoya, Executive Director of the Center on Privacy & Technology, Georgetown Law, who testified at a recent hearing in Congress on the FBI’s use of facial recognition technologies (FRTs). They discuss the state of FRTs, how they impact different communities, and how policymakers can balance the needs of law enforcement with civil liberties and due process. For more, check out https://www.perpetuallineup.org/.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Schwarger. On today's show, the FBI and facial recognition
0:10.5	technology. Most of you listeners probably have a driver's license, but you probably don't know that
0:15.6	18 states allow the FBI to scan that license. Another 10 allow state and local law enforcement to do the same
0:23.5	thing. And because of this, one and two American adults, that's 125 million people are in an FBI
0:29.6	facial recognition database. How did we get here? And how do we even know about this? Wouldn't the
0:34.2	government want to keep this kind of thing a secret? Well, my next guest did a bunch of work and figured this out, so we have him to thank for it. He's Alvaro Badoia,
0:42.2	executive director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law. They've got a new
0:47.5	report coming out, or not coming out, it's been out, at perpetual lineup.org. We'll link to that
0:52.6	in the show notes for today, but it's a report
0:54.4	about the state of facial recognition technology in the United States. Alvaro, thanks for
0:59.2	joining the show. Thanks for having you. So are we in a permanent police lineup?
1:04.9	The funny thing is that in many ways we are. And what do I mean by that? If late at night the police knocked on your door
1:12.6	and you opened it up and they said, hey, there's been a robbery in your neighborhood, but we
1:17.2	have good news. We got the guy. Will you come down to the police station and stand in the lineup?
1:22.3	We need your help. I think most people would say no. I think most people would probably prefer
1:26.8	not to do that.
1:28.2	And yet, as you just said, one out of two Americans, just by having a driver's license, have actually said yes.
1:36.0	And almost all those people have no idea that they've said yes.
1:39.7	Their faces are scanned for criminal investigations, much like criminal fingerprints, criminals fingerprints,
1:45.7	and there are basically no controls and little oversight over this whole process.
1:51.9	And if there are so few controls and so little oversight, how does someone like you who doesn't
1:56.9	work for the FBI figure out the scale of this surveillance?
	...

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