ICE’s Reckless Use of Facial Recognition Tech
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2019
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Aaron Mak talks about federal law enforcement's use of facial recognition technology with Jake Laperruque. He’s Senior Counsel at The Constitution Project, which is part of the Project on Government Oversight. According to The Washington Post, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and FBI officials have been partnering with state DMVs to scan through millions of drivers license photos. Jake explains the civil liberties implications of the practice and suggests regulations that might provide some level of oversight.
After the interview, Aaron talks to Slate’s own Shannon Palus for this week’s edition of Don’t Close My Tabs.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future. I'm Aaron Mack. |
| 0:12.0 | Hey everyone, welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. We are recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 9th. |
| 0:23.9 | On today's show, we'll talk about how ICE agents and the FBI are using facial recognition software to scan through millions of driver's license photos that they obtain through state DMVs. |
| 0:33.2 | To learn more about this practice and to get a general update on facial recognition and law enforcement, |
| 0:43.0 | I'll talk to Jake Laperuch. He's Senior Counsel at the Constitution Project, which is part of the project on government oversight. After the interview, my colleague Shannon Paulus will join me for |
| 0:47.9 | Don't Close My Tabs, where we'll talk about the best things we saw on the web this week. That's all |
| 0:52.5 | coming up on if-then. |
| 0:59.4 | Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that immigration officials and the FBI are working with local DMVs to scan through driver's license databases using facial recognition |
| 1:04.7 | software. Some states allow undocumented immigrants to get driver's licenses, but it now seems |
| 1:10.2 | like these people could be |
| 1:11.0 | putting themselves at more risk if they do so. These searches are done with little oversight or |
| 1:15.5 | regulation, and lawmakers have generally not authorized this arrangement. And of course, they're |
| 1:20.2 | not just scanning licenses of potential suspects or undocumented immigrants. They're scanning |
| 1:25.0 | through all the licenses in the database, so millions of citizens |
| 1:28.3 | and non-citizens alike are becoming unwilling participants in a government surveillance practice. |
| 1:33.6 | Joining us to talk about the civil liberties implications of all this is Jake LaPerouk. He's senior |
| 1:39.2 | counsel at the Constitution Project, which is part of the project on government oversight. Jake, thanks for joining us. |
| 1:45.4 | Hi, thanks so much for having me. |
| 1:46.9 | So given that you've been following facial recognition for a while now, what stuck out |
| 1:50.8 | to you the most about this arrangement? |
| 1:53.4 | Well, we've seen similar things like this before. |
| 1:56.5 | So this, unfortunately, was, well, so somewhat shocking, not exactly surprising. |
... |
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