ICE officers are able to point their smartphone’s camera at a person and near instantaneously run their face against a bank of 200 million images, then pull up their name, date of birth, nationality, unique identifiers such as their “alien” number, and whether an immigration judge has determined they should be deported from the country, according to ICE material viewed by 404 Media.
The new material, which includes user manuals for ICE’s recently launched internal app called Mobile Fortify, provides granular insight into exactly how ICE’s new facial recognition app works, what data it can return on a subject, and where ICE is sourcing that data. The app represents an unprecedented linking of government databases into a single tool, including from the State Department, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the FBI, and state records. It also includes the potential for ICE to later add commercially available databases that contain even more personal data on people inside the United States.
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“This app shows that biometric technology has moved well beyond just confirming someone's identity. In the hands of ICE officers, it's becoming a way to retrieve vast amounts of data about a person on demand just by pointing a camera in their face,” Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told 404 Media. “The more they streamline its use, the more they streamline its abuse. When an officer says, ‘papers please,’ you could choose to say nothing and face the consequences; with face recognition, your options are diminished.”