“Dozens of law-enforcement agencies from Massachusetts to Arizona are preparing to outfit their forces with controversial hand-held facial-recognition devices as soon as September, raising significant questions about privacy and civil liberties,” Emily Steel and Julia Angwin report for The Wall Street Journal.
“With the device, which attaches to an iPhone, an officer can snap a picture of a face from up to five feet away, or scan a person’s irises from up to six inches away, and do an immediate search to see if there is a match with a database of people with criminal records,” Steel and Angwin report. “The gadget also collects fingerprints. Until recently, this type of portable technology has mostly been limited to military uses, for instance to identify possible insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan.”
“The rollout has raised concerns among some privacy advocates about the potential for misuse,” Steel and Angwin report. “A fundamental question is whether or not using the device in certain ways would constitute a “search” that requires a warrant. Courts haven’t decided the issue.”
“BI2 says it has agreements with about 40 agencies to deliver roughly 1,000 of the devices, which cost $3,000 apiece. Some law-enforcement officials believe the new gear could be an important weapon against crime,” Steel and Angwin report. “‘We are living in an age where a lot of people try to live under the radar and in the shadows and avoid law enforcement,’ says Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, Ariz. He is equipping 75 deputies under his command with the device in the fall.”
Steel and Angwin report, “Mr. Babeu says his deputies will start using the gadget try to identify people they stop who aren’t carrying other identification. (In Arizona, police can arrest people not carrying valid photo ID.) Mr. Babeu says it also will be used to verify the identity of people arrested for a crime, potentially exposing the use of fake IDs and quickly determining a person’s criminal history.”
“BI2’s device attaches to the back of an iPhone, adding about 1.75 inches to its width. It plans to offer a version for Android phones in the future. The company says Moris will be sold only to law-enforcement agencies, although it is considering building applications for the health-care and financial industries,” Steel and Angwin report. “The device links to a database of criminal records, iris and face images contributed by local law enforcement that use other BI2 technologies.”
Much more in the full article here.
[Attribution: Electronista. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]