Invasive and ineffective: DHS’s facial recognition system
The Department of Homeland Security has switched to a mobile facial recognition system that combines two of the worst qualities a government
The Department of Homeland Security has switched to a mobile facial recognition system that combines two of the worst qualities a government surveillance tool can have: it tramples privacy and doesn’t work, especially when analyzing non-whites.
Under claims of “efficiency,” DHS and its subagencies are now using the smartphone app “Mobile Fortify” to identify people in the field. Wired reports this utility draws on Federal databases for facial recognition and is plagued with false matches.
“Every manufacturer of this technology, every police department with a policy makes very clear that face recognition technology is not capable of providing a positive identification, that it makes mistakes, and that it’s only for generating leads,” says Nathan Wessler, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
Records reviewed by WIRED also show that DHS’s hasty approval of Fortify last May was enabled by dismantling centralized privacy reviews and quietly removing department-wide limits on facial recognition—changes overseen by a former Heritage Foundation lawyer and Project 2025 contributor, who now serves in a senior DHS privacy role.
DHS—which has declined to detail the methods and tools that agents are using, despite repeated calls from oversight officials and nonprofit privacy watchdogs—has used Mobile Fortify to scan the faces not only of “targeted individuals,” but also people later confirmed to be US citizens and others who were observing or protesting enforcement activity.
Once again, DHS tosses the Constitution for its own expedience.