DHS: We May Start Tracking Minors With Facial Recognition Tech; Also DHS: No, We Won’t

We do know the DHS definitely wants as much facial recognition tech involved as possible when it comes to border crossings and international airports. That it might think now would be the time to add children to the mix is unwelcome, but not unsurprising.

But maybe the DHS should make sure all of its officials are working from the same set of talking points. The guy running the biometric shop for the DHS went on record with comments that strongly suggested this tech would soon be used to track minors who’ve attempted to cross the border. It’s not like he made these comments on background or off the record. He made them in front of several witnesses, as Eileen Guo reports for MIT Technology Review.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking into ways it might use facial recognition technology to track the identities of migrant children, “down to the infant,” as they age, according to John Boyd, assistant director of the department’s Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), where a key part of his role is to research and develop future biometric identity services for the government.

As Boyd explained at a conference in June, the key question for OBIM is, “If we pick up someone from Panama at the southern border at age four, say, and then pick them up at age six, are we going to recognize them?”

That was the stuff Boyd was saying all the way back in June, which is a lifetime of news cycles. MIT Technology Review took the time to follow up with Boyd to ensure he actually meant the things he said. It appears he did. He said nothing was happening yet but confirmed his office was “funding” this initiative. After that, he kind of stopped talking to Guo and MIT Technology Review, vaguely referencing something about “rulemaking” discussions before shutting down this line of communication.

MIT went to press. No sooner had it done that than the DHS stepped in to contradict the stuff the DHS said a few months ago, as personified by OBIM assistant director John Boyd. It first sent the standard statement claiming the DHS uses tech responsibly, adheres to all the laws, and (lol) is “committed to protecting the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties” of “all individuals” who may be subjected to its surveillance tech.

The real statement followed shortly thereafter, which suggests the DHS isn’t really ready to talk publicly about its plans to subject minors to biometric scanning at this point in time.

The agency later noted “DHS does not collect facial images from minors under 14, and has no current plans to do so for either operational or research purposes,” walking back Boyd’s statements. 

It’s not really a denial, is it? All it says is that it’s not doing this right now and has no plans in place. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t being discussed (see also the Boyd comment about “rulemaking” earlier in this post) or being funded with the obvious intention of being deployed in the future.

It also doesn’t mean this isn’t already happening, whether or not any official program is in place. After all, the tech has already been deployed. The only thing stopping minors from being scanned are the people on the front lines. And that doesn’t actually appear to be happening. According to a former CBP official who visited several border crossings during his years with the agency, everyone being processed was subjected to biometric scanning.

He says “every center” he visited “had biometric identity collection, and everybody was going through it,” though he was unaware of a specific policy mandating the practice. “I don’t recall them separating out children,” he adds.

Add these three assertions together and you’re left with the distinct impression that facial images of minors are already being collected by DHS components. There may be no official process in place, but if the DHS isn’t taking active steps to prevent this from happening, it’s not that much different from having a program already in place. All that’s missing are all the important things, like guidelines, processes, privacy impact assessments, oversight, reporting mandates, and routine testing of equipment and algorithms to limit false positives or negatives.

The DHS’s denial is useless in this context. And I don’t believe for a moment it won’t officially add minors to its facial recognition collections as soon as it feels it can get away with it. Boyd’s mistake was telling members of the general public about it long before the DHS itself wanted to make this a part of the immigration discussion. And I don’t imagine the DHS will be asking him to represent it at any future conferences or other public events.