A Face in the Crowd

Is surveillance software turning police into Robocops?

Image: Visionics

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Americans have long accepted the presence of hidden security cameras that monitor banks, airports, office lobbies, and convenience stores. But over the past year, law enforcement agencies have sparked new privacy concerns by quietly linking surveillance cameras to computers, using software to scan the faces of ordinary citizens and instantly identify those with a criminal record.

In January, federal agents at the presidential inauguration wore tiny cameras designed to compare the facial features of onlookers with computerized images of suspected terrorists. That same month, police in Tampa, Florida, tested “facial recognition technology” at the Super Bowl, scanning 75,000 fans and running the images through a database of digitized mug shots. (The system made 19 matches, but police did not stop any of the suspects to confirm their identities.) And in June, Tampa police installed software in 36 cameras in the Ybor City entertainment district to routinely monitor the faces of pedestrians for wanted criminals.

The technology used in Ybor City, called FaceIt, was designed by Visionics Corp. of New Jersey, a leading developer of face-recognition systems. The software breaks faces into 80 distinct “landmarks,” which can then be compared to features in stored images almost instantaneously. Visionics has received $2 million from the Defense Department to adapt the idea for military uses, and the company says that a growing number of law enforcement agencies have expressed interest in the technology, especially in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. West Virginia and Illinois already use versions of such software to confirm the identity of applicants for driver’s licenses and social services. As the systems spread, police are digitizing more mug shots to create larger databases-and the FBI has begun digitizing 40 million criminal records at its National Crime Information Center.

Armed with cameras linked to every mug shot in the nation, law enforcement officers would be more like Robocops, capable of recognizing anyone in a police database. But the emerging technology has raised myriad privacy concerns. Civil rights advocates question whether people who have been arrested but not convicted will be included in the databases, and who will have access to stored surveillance images. What’s more, government tests show that bad lighting or camera angles can produce false matches. “Police harassment of innocent people is a real possibility,” says Eric Rubin, an organizer with the Tampa Bay Action Group, a coalition that has staged masked protests against the technology.

So far, police in Tampa have made no arrests based on the face-scanning software. But officials in the East London borough of Newham, where 250 cameras installed by Visionics have scanned pedestrians for the past three years, insist that law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear. The technology, says town official Bob Lack, is not Big Brother, but more like “a friendly uncle and aunt watching over you.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate