A facial recognition app being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has access to databases containing more than 200 million images, 404 Media reports. The findings, based on user manuals for ICE’s “Mobile Fortify” app, shed new light on the technology the agency is using to accomplish mass deportations.
Mobile Fortify allows ICE agents to pull up a range of information by simply pointing their cellphone cameras at individuals’ faces – including names, dates of birth, nationality and immigration status.
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The app, according to 404 Media, “represents an unprecedented linking of government databases.”
The tool draws from sources such as Customs and Border Protection, the FBI, the State Department and state governments. Mobile Fortify can also be expanded to collect information from readily available commercial databases.
‘Your options are diminished’
The app will enhance the ability of ICE agents to obtain information even when individuals they confront exercise their right to remain silent, Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told 404 Media.
“When an officer says, ‘papers please,’ you could choose to say nothing and face the consequences; with face recognition, your options are diminished,” Maass said.
Aside from its facial recognition capabilities, Mobile Fortify can also scan an individual’s fingerprints. Known as “contactless fingerprints,” the feature can access the Department of Homeland Security’s biometrics database to identify an individual.
Another option, referred to as the “Super Query,” allows ICE agents to search multiple databases at once with information related to “individuals, vehicles, airplanes, vessels, addresses, phone numbers and firearms.”
Civil liberties concerns
Mobile Fortify has raised concerns among civil liberties advocates, including Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
“I worry ICE could be embracing a less accurate system because they’re indifferent to mistakes or even trying to build in systems that maximize chances of producing a ‘match’ that gives them a pro forma basis for stopping or detaining people,” Laperruque told 404 Media. Already, he said, “ICE is being criticized in court for improper stops and racial profiling.”
A lawsuit filed in July by migrant advocacy groups accuses ICE of indiscriminately targeting people of color in California. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction forbidding ICE from conducting detention stops without “reasonable suspicion” that the person being stopped is violating U.S. immigration law.
However, White House “border czar” Tom Homan said immigration agents do not need probable cause to detain people for short periods.
“They just go through the observations,” Homan said on Fox News, “get articulable facts, based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.”
