The FBI took fire from privacy advocates and members of Congress Wednesday over how it characterizes its face recognition program, which has allowed agents to access and algorithmically match the photos of tens of millions of Americans — including innocent people who have never been charged with a crime.
At a hearing convened by the House of Representatives’ government oversight committee, experts and lawmakers pressed an FBI representative on the agency’s misrepresentation of the program’s scope, as well as its refusal to audit the accuracy of systems responsible for matching vast databases of photos with criminal suspects.
FBI spokesperson Kimberly Del Greco responded to several questions with statements that contradict what is currently known about the scope and capabilities of the agency’s face recognition programs.
“The only information the FBI has and have collected in our database are criminal mugshot photos,” Del Greco stated, when asked by committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) whether the FBI was collecting or storing photos of innocent people from other sources, like social media. “We do not have any other photos in our repository.”
“That’s not true,” Chaffetz replied.
According to a comprehensive report released last year by researchers at Georgetown Law, roughly half of all Americans have their photos accessible by a law enforcement face recognition system. The report found that 16 states grant the FBI free access to driver’s license photos for its Next Generation Identification and Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation (FACE) photo-searching systems. The House Oversight Committee also recently learned that two additional states — Arizona and Maryland — have been added, bringing the total to 18 states.
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