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Though the federal government widely uses facial recognition for various uses from criminal investigations to collecting traveler data, this use is largely unmonitored and unmanaged — a scenario that must change to protect people’s privacy and avoid inaccurate identification of perpetrators, a government watchdog report has found.
A recent report (PDF) by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) surveyed 42 federal agencies that employ law-enforcement officers and found that 20 of them — many of which are not typically involved in criminal investigations — either use their own facial-recognition systems or use systems owned and maintained by other agencies or companies, such as Clearview AI or Amazon’s Rekognition.
