With face recognition technology, users can, e.g. youIt's becoming a staple in airport security, stadiums are the next big “market” and it's becoming ubiquitous, but its potential is being held back by one simple obstacle: kids.
Now, in the name of border security, that may be about to change for everyone.
“Facial recognition technology (FRT) has not traditionally been applied to children.” Observed “This is primarily because training datasets of actual children's faces are scarce, consisting either of low-quality images taken from the internet or small sample sizes with little diversity. Such limitations reflect important privacy and consent sensitivities when it comes to minors,” MIT Technology Review said in a detailed report this month.
Democrats have abandoned the party's historically anti-business, pro-civil liberties core, which has always believed that a strong central government is the people's only bulwark against systematic injustice and exploitation.
But at least the Department of Homeland Security's current thinking, presented at a conference this summer, suggests officials are trying to break the taboo around facial recognition of minors. Despite denying that it's happening, insiders contacted by the Review warned that the practice may already be happening.
At the Federal Identity Forum and Expo in June, an annual gathering of government officials and contractors in the field of so-called “identity management,” John Boyd, deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security's Biometric Identity Management Agency, openly speculated that the agency's so-called Craniofacial Structure Advancement Initiative could soon be applied “all the way down to infants” in places where the U.S. government receives and processes immigrants.
“If we capture a 4-year-old on the southern border in Panama and then capture someone at 6, would we recognize that person?” he asked.
But the “border” effectively extends beyond the U.S.-Mexico border that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Since last year, Customs and Border Protection has “used a mobile app, CBP One, for asylum seekers to submit biometric data even before they enter the United States…. After entering the United States, migrants are subject to further biometric data collection, including DNA,” according to the review. Citing a Georgetown Law School report, the review tallied at least 1.5 million DNA profiles in the CBP One database, and “since January 2020, CBP began collecting DNA from individuals detained and subject to fingerprinting, 1.5 million DNA profiles have been added to law enforcement databases, primarily from migrants crossing the border.”
Put plainly, the United States' “border” is quickly becoming a place where U.S. government technology digitally collects biometric information on people believed to be entering or leaving its territory or jurisdiction.
This transformation raises strong questions about the constitutionality of the identity-based surveillance and tracking model to which this approach to “border” security is applied. It is all too easy to see that this model could soon be expanded to cover all Americans, especially those who are politically targeted by the government or singled out for suspicion and enhanced surveillance.
For those on the political left, using the border to feed the biometric herd highlights how mainstream Democrats have abandoned their historically anti-business, pro-civil liberties core, which has always believed that a strong central government is the people's only bulwark against systemic injustice and exploitation.
But for those on the political right, who have long believed that strengthened border security is necessary to reclaim American sovereignty from established elites who seek to bolster their own political and economic interests with no regard for the rule of law, the Border-to-Borg pipeline highlights a way in which cutting-edge security technology is being repurposed by the administration to negate constitutional protections, particularly for its own critics.
DHS told MIT Tech Review that it will “ensure that all technology, regardless of type, operates within the law and under established authorities, while protecting the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of all individuals who may be affected by the technology we use to keep our nation safe and secure.” Additionally, the statement said the agency “does not collect facial images from minors under the age of 14, and has no current plans to do so for operational or research purposes.”
But a former CBP official familiar with migrant processing centers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Review that in all the centers he visited, “biometric identity checks were conducted and everyone was checked without the facility “segregating the children.”
