Ten federal agencies are expanding their use of facial recognition

The government accountability office has revealed in new reports that 10 federal institutions plan to expand the use of their facial recognition. In a survey involving 24 federal institutions on the use of their facial recognition technology, agriculture, trade, defense, homeland security, health and human services, interior, justice, country, treasury and department of veteran affairs told Gao that they planned to use face recognition In more areas through 2023 fiscal year.

For the Washington Post record, most institutions have used facial recognition to provide access to their personnel to their telephone and computer. However, there are more agents who use it to investigate crime and trace people. The Ministry of Agriculture seems to want to monitor feed live in the facilities and scan individuals in the watch list. Other agencies want to use it to automate identity verification for travelers at the airport.

The agent is planning this expansion even though there is a strengthening pushback against the face recognition system. They are still far from very accurate, especially when identifying women and POCs, and have caused false arrests in the past. In Detroit, its use caused the arrest of one of the two men last year, both of them black. Massachusetts countries, Maine and Virginia prohibit law enforcement from the use of facial recognition. At the same time, several cities throughout the US, including Portland, Oregon, have also limited their use. However, the GAO report, that “recent progress in facial recognition technology has increased its accuracy and its use.”

Ten Gao respondents also revealed that they had been involved in the research and development of facial recognition technology. For example, they are looking for technological abilities to identify individuals who wear masks and to detect image manipulation. In addition, several agencies, including the Ministry of Justice, Air Force and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, claimed to use ClearView AI. Clearview has been burned for scratching images of people from social networks over the past few years without the company’s knowledge or approval to build a database. Last year, the system, which could identify people in real time, reportedly used by 600 police departments throughout the US, including the FBI and DHS.