While I have written about—and presented on—the ever-changing, often confounding relationship between Big Data and police tactics, the majority of my research has focused on a very specific technology: DNA-matching science. Of course, many of us will always look to the apprehension of Joseph James D’Angelo, aka the Golden State Killer, as a keystone moment in the expansion of police surveillance tactics, but there are other technologies being used for identification as well, particularly facial recognition technology.
I was scanning through some social media platform, maybe it was Facebook, maybe it was Twitter... oh who am I kidding? It was definitely Twitter. I came across an article from Vice News (hyperlinked here: https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/9kx7np/ice-has-been-mining-dmv-databases-using-facial-recognition-for-years?fbclid=IwAR2TWvVfo2hDqFIhdggDSRcFr3NVnFPhTeCcoiXOoPQUIZjpyMLW7rNG1wM) with the headline: “ICE Has Been Mining DMV Databases Using Facial Recognition for Years.” To be completely transparent, I am not a big supporter of Vice News, and often times find myself doubting the validity of their sources and the news that the outlet reports. However, I went with it; the headline was intriguing. My first thought—before even scrolling past the banner image—was, “Of course!” Of course, the DMV is providing data to ICE (and other government agencies). Before we proceed, a bit of caution. The disdain one might feel for the DMV, a government entity in the business of banality, should not impress upon the disgust you have for the human rights violations taking place at the southern US border. It is pretty clear what is going on here; it’s simple, really. ICE asks the DMV for information on immigrants and the DMV shares images and other data from their records. As we know and should always remember facial recognition is, as Vice calls it, an “unofficial surveillance infrastructure” without oversight. Even though, as the article points out, cities like San Francisco have banned this sort of technology due to privacy infringement, companies like Amazon continues to sale facial recognition software to police agencies—and don’t pay taxes on the profits they make! There is no comprehensive oversight for the use of this technology, and, as a result, this police tactic when seen as a rhetorical act. Due to this lack of oversight, as Vice points out, states like Utah and Washington, which offer identification cards for undocumented immigrants, now must turn over their data to ICE, which includes images. The improper use of facial recognition technology—and other surveillance technologies like genealogy databases—continues to be defined by our police agencies. This issue is a small portion within the larger field of surveillance culture and unethical police actions, but we need to shed light upon this issue now (and in the future) as the human rights crisis at the border persists. One way you might consider helping those in crisis at the border is donate your time or your money to RAICES: https://www.raicestexas.org/donate/
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Charles WoodsPhD student focusing on Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical Communication at Illinois State University. Archives
October 2019
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