ICE Used Facial Recognition to Mine State Driver’s License Databases | Hacker News Reader

ICE Used Facial Recognition to Mine State Driver’s License Databases

nytimes.com

42 pointsjrochkind17 comments

See discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20377427

I think there was a discussion on Twitter a few weeks back between a flight passenger and an airline who at first told him he could "opt-out" of the facial recognition at airports -- only to learn that the airline doesn't actually scan your face itself for collection, so "opting-out" does nothing.

It's the DHS that has your face scan and they are allowing the airlines to tap into all of that facial recognition data and then "identify you" at airports through a new face scan against the DHS data. Your face profile has already been collected/created by the DHS.

Who knows to what other private companies the government is pimping out your "biometric identification data."

It could cut them off from a source of training data though; I haven’t been able to read what they do with the photos taken at the airport. IIRC the airline says they do not store them, but not whether they are transferred back to the government.

We will see no action on reigning in the use of automated facial recognition until a congressman is caught in a compromising sexual situation thanks to the use of the technology (and it is made publicly known).

Until that happens, they have no need to fear the misuse of this technology and we will continue to have our rights eroded under the guise of "keeping everyone safe."

If hackers would target this sort of information when required, I'd be quite happy. For ISP collecting browsing data for example, grab a few politicians histories and publish them. Bonus points for doing it through completely legal means.

Ingenious. The US has no national ID, so ICE built one by scraping. They didn't ask the states for consent, because the US has no real privacy law and also they're ICE.

The politics of immigration have also been a driver for national ID in the UK. Rather than build an upfront system, laws were passed requiring employers and landlords to check right to work and right to reside. The system was privatised as part of the "hostile environment".

Immigration enforcement is a big driver of panopticons, because the public likes the idea of hunting foreigners and is dismissive of the idea that they have rights. The only way to truly exclude immigrants from a country is greater and greater use of "checkpoints", which can increasingly be virtual. Expect to see more and more ICE cameras popping up to perform the other side of this facial recognition.

NY recently approved licenses for undocumented immigrants. Seems like this'll have a major chilling effect on that initiative.

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