Biometrics Facial Recognition FBI NGI
GAO Report: FBI’s Use of Face Recognition Fails on Privacy and Accuracy
The Government Accountability Office released a report today detailing the FBI’s failure to conduct a privacy audit of the agency’s use of facial recognition or adequately test the accuracy of the technology. EPIC and a coalition of public interest groups recently urged the Justice Department to extend the public comment period for the FBI’s Next Generation Identification database, which includes facial recognition capabilities. Previous Freedom of Information Act requests by EPIC showed that the agency had numerous agreements with states to access driver license photos for facial recognition searches and that technical specifications allowed for a 20% search error rate.