There’s a significant intimidation factor

August 16, 2024 12:43 PM

The US wants to use facial recognition to identify migrant children as they age. "The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking into ways it might use facial recognition technology to track the identities of migrant children, “down to the infant,” as they age, according to John Boyd, assistant director of the department’s Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), where a key part of his role is to research and develop future biometric identity services for the government."
posted by ursus_comiter (26 comments total)

Apart from anything else, there seems to be an issue with facial recognition confusing person of colour A with person of colour B far more often

than facial recognition confuses white person A with white person B.

Facial recognition is significantly more prone to false-positives for people of colour - it's badly built/badly designed/badly programmed that way.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:51 PM on August 16 [13 favorites]

Sometimes some organizations should really stop thinking of the children. Unethical program with unethical technology with unethical means to unethical ends. Fuck this entire deal.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:53 PM on August 16 [22 favorites]

Truly hate America.
posted by Fizz at 12:58 PM on August 16 [4 favorites]

The closing quote is powerful. Excellent work by the source and the writer:

“It’s not an accident” that this development happens in the context of border zones, says Molnar. Borders are “the perfect laboratory for tech experimentation, because oversight is weak, discretion is baked into the decisions that get made … it allows the state to experiment in ways that it wouldn’t be allowed to in other spaces.”

But, she notes, “just because it happens at the border doesn’t mean that that’s where it’s going to stay.”
posted by EvaDestruction at 1:33 PM on August 16 [25 favorites]

DHS started out as a fascist organization and as only got progressively worse. Figuring out how to beef up the oppression even more gives all the wanna-be Hitlers with tiny hands itty bitty hard-ons.
posted by BlueHorse at 1:40 PM on August 16 [9 favorites]

I hate this. Citizens, housed people, etc, we are all being trained in accepting fascist violence against the vulnerable.
posted by Frowner at 1:45 PM on August 16 [17 favorites]

Creepy as hell, and also seems likely to be wildly error-prone.

What happened to fingerprinting, anyway?
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:57 PM on August 16 [3 favorites]

“The US” doesn’t want to do this. The DHS (and probably others) wants to do this.
posted by TedW at 2:11 PM on August 16 [2 favorites]

This is basically trying to chip people like they're animals, only the "chip" lies in a cloud server rather than underneath the skin.
posted by lock robster at 2:17 PM on August 16 [6 favorites]

In my experience, false positives are a feature for proponents of these types of initiatives.
posted by CPAnarchist at 2:23 PM on August 16 [5 favorites]

“The US” doesn’t want to do this.

the purpose of a system is what it does. The fact that the government continues to find this monstrosity is evidence that it’s something the system continues to do.
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:35 PM on August 16 [9 favorites]

“ As Boyd explained at a conference in June, the key question for OBIM is, “If we pick up someone from Panama at the southern border at age four, say, and then pick them up at age six, are we going to recognize them?””

Easy. You don’t send them away in the first place.
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:19 PM on August 16 [6 favorites]

I don't get the anti-facial recognition kneejerks. Seems like a more practical version of fingerprinting. "It's fascist to track border crossings of non-citizen minors". Every country on earth does that.
posted by hermanubis at 3:40 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]

Every country on earth does that.

(a) This is perhaps not the counter-argument you think it is.

(b) Treating minoritized or immigrant children as adults is not okay, however you want to quibble about the exact flavor of not-okay-ness.
posted by eviemath at 4:07 PM on August 16 [4 favorites]

I would like to remind everyone that the Constitution does not give Congress authority to regulate where people choose to travel and reside. This is because the Framers' Original Intent was the open borders they had in 1787.
posted by mikelieman at 4:15 PM on August 16 [12 favorites]

(c) Most countries I know of keep data on the details of people who cross their borders, and link eg. each of my border crossings with my same travel documents back to one single record that shows my border crossing history according to that travel document. If I’ve used multiple different travel documents, like both my US passport and my Canadian Permanent Resident card when re-entering Canada, then an entry using either of those documents will get linked to the same record. Yes, that record also includes the photos of my car’s license plate that they snap as I pull up to the kiosk, and of course my photo from my travel documents is part of that record. That’s both a qualitatively and quantitatively different thing than doing a facial recognition search every time I roll up to the border to see if I’ve somehow crossed using an entirely different identity. (Or someone who the algorithm mistakenly confuses with me has done so … not so likely for my white self, but not so uncommon for non-white folks, sadly.)
posted by eviemath at 4:15 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]

I’ll bet all of the people behind this idea grumble about how much they hate big government.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 4:17 PM on August 16 [14 favorites]

My guess is there's a contractor that's whispering in DHS's ear, and they have a slide deck somewhere that involves targeted marketing.
posted by credulous at 5:44 PM on August 16 [3 favorites]

Apart from anything else, there seems to be an issue with facial recognition confusing person of colour A with person of colour B far more often


Psst, they don’t really care if the wrong child is rounded up, detained and ejected from the country, as long as some child is rounded up, detained and ejected from the country
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 5:50 PM on August 16 [6 favorites]

But it’s all gonna change under Harris right? Right?
posted by iamck at 9:33 PM on August 16 [2 favorites]

Is there a point at which we all start wearing facial tattoos that are specifically designed to confuse these models?
posted by jpziller at 6:22 AM on August 17

US-VISIT was a terrible idea deployed to address a threat that was being blown out of proportion for political reasons. It is a dark stain on US history.

For me personally, facial recognition technology is an existential threat. I learned early on when the technology started to be publicly that I should never "check my gender" using it. humans had no issue gendering me properly - paying no attention whatsoever to me in women's public bathrooms, for example - but early facial recognition tools would think I was a man.

This will be used to track trans people seeking healthcare next, then all women seeking the same.

First the immigrants, then the queers, and then they will come for you. We've heard this story before.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:26 AM on August 17 [11 favorites]

There's no practical way for this to ever happen but I wish software developers had a professional code of ethics and just wouldn't assist with stuff like this.
posted by signsofrain at 8:43 PM on August 17 [4 favorites]

I know I always say it, but I'm going to say it again: Use of facial recognition should be punished by 25 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The same as uranium smuggling. 100% serious.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:53 AM on August 18 [1 favorite]

In other facial surveillance news: FTC says Rite Aid technology falsely tagged consumers, particularly women and people of color, as shoplifters
posted by ursus_comiter at 12:13 PM on August 20 [2 favorites]

I don't get the anti-facial recognition kneejerks. Seems like a more practical version of fingerprinting.

Fun fact: fingerprinting has less certainty than people think.
posted by TedW at 1:28 PM on August 20 [4 favorites]