Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has publicly released an app that Sheriff Offices, police departments, and other local or regional law enforcement can use to scan someone’s face as part of immigration enforcement, 404 Media has learned.
The news follows Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of another internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) app called Mobile Fortify that uses facial recognition to nearly instantly bring up someone’s name, date of birth, alien number, and whether they’ve been given an order of deportation. The new local law enforcement-focused app, called Mobile Identify, crystallizes one of the exact criticisms of DHS’s facial recognition app from privacy and surveillance experts: that this sort of powerful technology would trickle down to local enforcement, some of which have a history of making anti-immigrant comments or supporting inhumane treatment of detainees.
Handing “this powerful tech to police is like asking a 16-year old who just failed their drivers exams to pick a dozen classmates to hand car keys to,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told 404 Media. “These careless and cavalier uses of facial recognition are going to lead to U.S. citizens and lawful residents being grabbed off the street and placed in ICE detention.”
Mobile Identify is designed “to identify and process individuals who may be in the country unlawfully,” according to its respective page on the Google Play Store. The app was published on Monday.
A source with knowledge of the app told 404 Media the app doesn’t return names after a face search. Instead it tells users to contact ICE and provides a reference number, or to not detain the person depending on the result. 404 Media granted the person anonymity because they weren’t permitted to speak to the press.
404 Media downloaded a copy of the app and decompiled its code, a common practice among security researchers and technology journalists. Although the Play Store page does not mention facial recognition, multiple parts of the app’s code make clear references to scanning faces. One package is called “facescanner.” Other parts mention “FacePresence” and “No facial image found.”
Screenshots of the app on the Play Store page show the app requires users to login with their Login.gov account, and that the app “requires camera access to take photos of subjects.” At the time of writing the app has “1+” downloads, according to the Play Store page.
The Play Store page does not say exactly how the app processes scanned faces, such as what images it compares them to, or what data the app returns upon a hit. In statements to 404 Media, DHS and CBP did not provide any specifics.
The app is for agencies that are part of the 287(g) program, the Play Store page says. This program lets ICE delegate certain immigration-related authorities and powers to local and state agencies. Members of the 287(g) Task Force Model (TFM), for instance, are allowed to enforce certain immigration authorities during their police duties, ICE’s website explains. At the time of writing, 555 agencies in 34 states are part of the TFM program, according to data published by ICE.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has criticized the 287(g) program because a large number of participating sheriffs have made anti-immigrant statements, supported inhumane immigration and border enforcement policies, and have a pattern of racial profiling and other civil rights violations.
Cooper Quintin, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told 404 Media “Face surveillance in general, and this tool specifically, was already a dangerous infringement of civil liberties when in the hands of ICE agents. Putting a powerful surveillance tool like this in the hands of state and local law enforcement officials around the country will only further erode peoples’ Fourth Amendment rights, for citizens and non-citizens alike. This will further erode due process, and subject even more Americans to omnipresent surveillance and unjust detainment.”
Screenshots from the app's Google Play Store page.
Mobile Fortify—the facial recognition app used by ICE which 404 Media first revealed in June—uses the CBP Traveler Verification Service (TVS) ordinarily designed for when people enter the U.S. The app took those systems and an unprecedented collection of U.S. government databases and turned them inwards, letting officers in the field reveal a person’s identity and immigration status. The app also uses data from the State Department, FBI, and state databases, and uses a bank of 200 million images.
404 Media reported in October that multiple social media videos show Border Patrol and ICE officers scanning peoples’ faces on the street.
“I’m an American citizen so leave me alone,” a person stopped by ICE says in one video.
“Alright, we just got to verify that,” one of the officers replies.
404 Media also obtained an internal DHS document which says ICE does not let people decline or consent to being scanned by the app. The document, called a Privacy Threshold Analysis, said photos taken by the app will be stored for 15 years, including those of U.S. citizens.
Ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie G. Thompson previously told 404 Media in a statement that ICE will prioritize the results of the Mobile Fortify app over birth certificates. “ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien,” he said. “ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”
In response to questions about the new app for Sheriff Offices and other local law enforcement, a DHS spokesperson told 404 Media in an email “While the Department does not discuss specific vendors or operational tools, any technology used by DHS Components must comply with the requirements and oversight framework.”
CBP responded with a statement primarily discussing Mobile Fortify. “Biometric data used to identify individuals through TVS are collected by government authorities consistent with the law, including issuing documents or processing illegal aliens. The Mobile Fortify Application provides a mobile capability that uses facial comparison as well as fingerprint matching to verify the identity of individuals against specific immigration related holdings,” the statement said. CBP added it built the Mobile Fortify application to support ICE, and confirmed ICE has used the app in its operations around the U.S.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
