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# ICE, FBI among federal agencies searching Florida driver’s licenses for facial recognition, records show | Exclusive

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- Elaine Thompson / AP
  In this Oct. 31, 2018, file photo, demonstrators hold images of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos near their faces during a Halloween-themed protest at Amazon headquarters over the company's facial recognition system, "Rekognition," in Seattle.
- Salwan Georges / The Washington Post
  A law enforcement officer walks past ICE logo at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington in 2017.
- Taimy Alvarez / Sun Sentinel
  Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri
- Gregory Bull/AP
  Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents take a suspect into custody in Chula Vista, Calif.

Elaine Thompson / AP
1 of 4
In this Oct. 31, 2018, file photo, demonstrators hold images of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos near their faces during a Halloween-themed protest at Amazon headquarters over the company's facial recognition system, "Rekognition," in Seattle.
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By Joey Roulette
UPDATED: July 15, 2019 at 7:30 PM EDT

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI are among 17 federal agencies that have access to every Florida driver’s license through a massive facial recognition network, records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel show.

The network, called Face Analysis Comparison & Examination System (FACES), is maintained by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and accessed by 273 “partner agencies,” including Customs and Border Protection and the IRS, as part of an exhaustive push from police agencies to use facial recognition as a law-enforcement tool.

An agent can upload an image of an unknown person’s face to the program, which uses a face-matching algorithm to check it against a repository of about 25 million images — pulled from mugshot collections and every driver’s license in Florida — to produce a lineup of visually similar matches.

The recent development of face-scanning technology and its use of databases containing people who haven’t committed crimes has become a flashpoint for state and federal lawmakers, who say scant regulation and oversight make it ripe for civil rights abuses and breaches of privacy protections. Florida currently has no laws regulating police use of the technology.

“This technology is not being regulated by any policy and can be easily abused and exploited,” state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, told the Orlando Sentinel, adding that ICE’s access to the database is “incredibly problematic and concerning.”

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who told state lawmakers in January that FACES is the largest facial recognition network in the country, dismissed any concerns of abuse.

“That argument or that concern is a hypothetical and a ‘what if’,” Gualtieri said. “You can say that about anything, that there’s a potential for abuse … Show me where the problem is.”

But his office hasn’t conducted any audits or reviews for FACES since its conception over a decade ago, and unlike some biometric search tools used by other agencies, agents aren’t required to log a reason for a search, making it difficult to flag improper use.

An ICE spokesman declined to specify how the agency uses FACES, beyond saying its investigations unit frequently uses it to identify children exploited by sex trafficking. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office provided copies of all partner agreements for FACES in response to a records request, but excluded its agreement with ICE and four other agencies.

A spokesman said those agreements were “lost” in 2012 or 2013.

Federal agencies’ access to the database, which is legal under Florida law but prohibited in states such as Vermont, is alarming to some lawmakers who feel sidelined by police agencies’ quick embrace of facial recognition without any legislative input.

“I would never support the federal government having unfettered access to facial recognition data on state driver’s licenses, and definitely without some sort of court order,” said Miami state Rep. Michael Grieco, the ranking Democrat on the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee. “I feel like we’re taking a step backwards; it’s like the wild west with privacy.”

Among Florida law enforcement officials, Gualtieri has led the push to increase cooperation between local authorities and ICE. He spearheaded a pact between local and federal agencies that allows for suspected illegal immigrants to be held in local jails under federal authority and a program that gives deputies within local jails the authority to serve immigration warrants.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents take a suspect into custody in Chula Vista, Calif.

Most Florida police agencies use system

In addition to the federal agencies, the system is used by 180 of the 254 police departments in the state, including the Orlando Police Department, which is also wrapping up a 15-month pilot program with Amazon’s facial recognition surveillance software, Rekognition. That technology can automatically track suspects’ whereabouts in real-time — a more advanced surveillance tool Gualtieri says is “too big-brotherish.”

OPD did not respond to questions about how it uses FACES.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office is among 53 Florida sheriff’s offices using FACES, as are sheriff’s offices in Seminole, Lake, Volusia and Brevard. While Gualtieri says partner agencies need to monitor their own users’ access to the system, a spokesman for OCSO said “any oversight on this system would be handled by Pinellas.”

The agency said it doesn’t track how many of its personnel are using the FACES system.

At the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, about 40 employees have access to the system, spokesman Kevin McGinley said. “The whole office does not have access,” he said of the agency, which has just more than 400 sworn personnel. He added that the possible suspects flagged by a facial recognition search must still be scrutinized by an analyst.

Similarly, a spokesman for the Boca Raton Police Department said just 11 of the agency’s 216 officers use the system as a “lead generator.”

Auburndale police chief Andy Ray said the only one in his department with access to the system is the crime analyst, who creates “photo packs” of possible suspects no more than five to six times a month for investigations to determine which face in the results looks most like the one in the photo that was uploaded.

“We would not just go arrest that person based on a possible match” from FACES alone, Ray said.

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###### Nearly 300 local, state and federal agencies have access to the FACES system

- Air Force Office of Special Investigations

- Alachua County Sheriff’s Office

- Altamonte Springs Police Dept.

- Apopka Police Dept.

- Atlantic Beach Police Dept.

- Atlantis Police Dept.

- Auburndale Police Dept.

- Aventura Police Dept.

- Baker County Sheriff’s Office

- Bartow Police Dept.

- Bay County Sheriff’s Office

- Bay Harbor Islands Police Dept.

- Belle Isle Police Dept.

- Biscayne National Park

- Boca Raton Police Dept.

- Boyton Beach Police Dept.

- Bradenton Police Dept.

- Brevard County Sheriff’s Office

- Broward County Sheriff’s Office

- Bunnell Police Dept.

- Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms

- Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office

- Cape Coral Police Dept.

- Casselberry Police Dept.

- Central Florida High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Central Florida Intelligence Exchange

- Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office

- Chiefland Police Dept.

- Citrus County Sheriff’s Office

- Clay County Sheriff’s Office

- Clearwater Police Dept.

- Clermont Police Dept.

- Clewiston Police Dept.

- Cocoa Beach Police Dept.

- Cocoa Police Dept.

- Coconut Creek Police Dept.

- Collier County Sheriff’s Office

- Columbia County Sheriff’s Office

- Coral Gables Police Dept.

- Coral Springs Police Dept.

- Crestview Police Dept.

- Customs and Border Patrol

- Davie Police Dept.

- Daytona Beach Police Dept.

- Daytona Beach Shores Police Dept.

- DeLand Police Dept.

- Del Ray Police Dept.

- Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services Dept. of Defense

- Desoto County Sheriff’s Office

- Doral Police Dept.

- Drug Enforcement Administration

- Eatonville Police Dept.

- Edgewater Police Dept.

- Edgewood Police Dept.

- Escambia County Sheriff’s Office

- Eustis Police Dept.

- Federal Bureau of Investigations

- Fellsmere Police Dept.

- Fernandina Beach Police Dept.

- FL Dept of Financial Services Div. of Insurance Fraud

- FL Dept of Financial Services Div. of State Fire Marshal

- Flagler Beach Police Dept.

- Flagler County Sheriff’s Office

- Florida Atlantic University Police Dept.

- Florida City Police Dept.

- Florida Dept. of Business and Professional Regulation

- Florida Dept. of Corrections

- Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement

- Florida Dept. of Legal Affairs

- Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission

- Florida Highway Patrol

- Florida Lottery Division of Security

- Florida State Fire Marshal’s Office

- Fort Myers Police Dept.

- Fort Walton Beach Police Dept.

- Fruitland Park Police Dept.

- Ft. Lauderdale Police Dept.

- Ft. Pierce Police Dept.

- Gainesville Police Dept.

- Glades County Sheriff’s Office

- Greenacres Public Safety

- Gretna Public Safety Dept.

- Groveland Police Dept.

- Gulf Breeze Police Dept.

- Gulfport Police Dept.

- Haines City Police Dept.

- Hallandale Beach PD

- Hardee County Sheriff’s Office

- Hendry County Sheriff’s Office

- Hernando County Sheriff’s Office

- Hialeah Police Dept.

- Highlands County Sheriff’s Office

- Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office

- Holmes Beach Police Dept.

- Holmes County Sheriff’s Office

- Hollywood Police Dept.

- Homestead Police Dept.

- Immigration and Customs Enforcement

- Indialantic Police Dept.

- Indian Harbour Beach Police Dept.

- Indian River Sheriff’s Office

- Indian River Shores Public Safety

- Internal Revenue Service

- Jackson County Sheriff’s Office

- Jacksonville Beach Police Dept.

- Jacksonville Regional Operations Center

- Jacksonville Sheriffs Office

- Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office

- Jupiter Police Dept.

- Key West Police Dept.

- Kissimmee Police Dept.

- Lady Lake Police Dept.

- Lake County Sheriff’s Office

- Lake Mary Police Dept.

- Lake Wales Police Dept.

- Lakeland Police Dept.

- Lantana Police Dept.

- Largo Police Dept.

- Lauderhill Police Dept.

- Lee County Sheriff’s Office

- Leesburg Police Dept.

- Leon County Sheriff’s Office

- Levy County Sheriff’s Office

- Lighthouse Point Police Dept.

- Live Oak Police Dept.

- Longwood Police Dept.

- Lynn Haven Police Dept.

- Madison County Sheriff’s Office

- Madison Police Dept.

- Maitland Police Dept.

- Manatee County Sheriff’s Office

- Margate Police Dept.

- Marianna Police Dept.

- Marion County Sheriff’s Office

- Martin County Sheriff’s Office

- Mascotte Police Dept.

- Medley Police Dept.

- Melbourne Police Dept.

- Miami Beach Police Dept.

- Miami Gardens Police Dept.

- Miami Police Dept.

- Miami Shores Police Dept.

- Miami-Dade Police Dept.

- Miami-Dade Schools Police Dept.

- Miami Springs Police Dept.

- Miramar Police Dept.

- Monroe County Sheriff’s Dept.

- Mount Dora Police Dept.

- Naples Police Dept.

- Nassau County Sheriff’s Office

- National Criminal Intelligence Service

- Neptune Beach Police Dept.

- New Port Richey Police Dept.

- New Smyrna Beach Police Dept.

- Niceville Police Dept.

- North Bay Village Police Dept.

- North Florida High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area

- North Miami Beach Police Dept.

- North Miami Police Dept.

- North Palm Beach Police Dept.

- North Port Police Dept.

- North West Fusion Center

- Oakland Police Dept.

- Ocala Police Dept.

- Ocean Ridge Police Dept.

- Ocoee Police Dept.

- Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office

- Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Office

- Okeechobee Police Dept.

- Orange City Police Dept.

- Orange County Corrections Dept.

- Orange County Sheriff’s Office

- Orange Park Police Dept.

- Orlando Police Dept.

- Ormond Beach Police Dept.

- Osceola County Sheriff’s Office

- Oviedo Police Dept.

- Palatka Police Dept.

- Palm Bay Police Dept.

- Palm Beach Gardens Police Dept.

- Palm Beach Medical Examiner

- Palm Beach Police Dept.

- Palm Beach Regional Fusion Center

- Palm Beach County Schools Police Dept.

- Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office

- Palm Beach Shores Police Dept.

- Palm Springs Police Dept.

- Palmetto Police Dept.

- Panama City Beach Police Dept.

- Panama City Police Dept.

- Parker Police Dept.

- Pasco County Sheriff’s Office

- Pembroke Pines Police Dept.

- Pensacola Police Dept.

- Pinecrest Police Dept.

- Pinellas Park Police Dept.

- Plant City Police Dept.

- Plantation Police Dept.

- Polk County Sheriff’s Office

- Port Orange Police Dept.

- Port St. Lucie Police Dept.

- Punta Gorda Police Dept.

- Putnam County Sheriff’s Office

- Quincy Police Dept.

- Region 6 Information Exchange

- Riviera Beach Police Dept.

- Rockledge Police Dept.

- Sanford Airport Police Dept.

- Sanford Police Dept.

- Sanibel Police Dept.

- Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office

- Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office

- Sarasota Police Dept.

- Sebastian Police Dept.

- Sebring Police Dept.

- Seminole County Sheriff’s Office

- Seminole Police Dept.

- Social Security Administration

- South Daytona Police Dept.

- South Miami Police Dept.

- Starke Police Dept.

- State Attorneys Office – 9th Circuit

- State Attorneys Office – 9th Circuit

- St Augustine Police Dept.

- St. Cloud Police Dept.

- St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office

- St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office

- St. Petersburg Police Dept.

- Stuart Police Dept.

- Sumter County Sheriff’s Office

- Sunny Isles Beach Police Dept.

- Sunrise Police Dept.

- Surfside Police Dept.

- Suwannee County Sheriff’s Office

- Tallahassee Community College Police Dept.

- Tallahassee Police Dept.

- Tampa International Airport PD

- Tampa Police Dept.

- Tarpon Springs Police Dept.

- Temple Terrace Police Dept.

- Tequesta Police Dept.

- Titusville Police Dept.

- Umatilla Police Dept.

- United States Coast Guard

- United States Marshal Service

- United States Secret Service

- University of Central Florida Police Dept.

- University of Florida Police Dept.

- University of Miami Police Dept.

- University of North Florida Police Dept.

- University of South Florida Police Dept.

- US Dept. of Justice

- US Dept. of State

- US Dept. of Veterans Affairs Police

- US Postal Inspection Service

- Venice Police Dept.

- Vero Beach Police Dept.

- Village of Palmetto Bay Police Dept.

- Village of Virginia Gardens Police Dept.

- Volusia County Sheriff’s Office

- Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office

- Walton County Sheriff’s Office

- Wauchula Police Dept.

- West Melbourne Police Dept.

- West Miami Police Dept.

- West Palm Beach Police Dept.

- Williston Police Dept.

- Wilton Manors Police Dept.

- Windermere Police Dept.

- Winter Gardens Police Dept.

- Winter Haven Police Dept.

- Winter Park Police Dept.

- Winter Springs Police Dept.

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The FBI has queried several state driver’s databases, including Florida’s, over 390,000 times since 2011, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, denounced the FBI’s use of state driver’s license data for facial recognition searches during a May hearing on the technology with the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

“What troubles me too is just the fact that no one in an elected position” was involved in the decision to allow this access for federal agencies, Jordan said. “It’s time for a timeout.”

Though ICE’s use of FACES is unclear, its access is part of a broader effort from the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, to use facial recognition.

According to documents obtained in a records request by the Georgetown Center for Privacy and Technology, ICE agents ran facial recognition searches on similar databases in other states, including Utah, Washington and Vermont, where undocumented immigrants are granted driver’s licenses.

In 2018, agents with Customs and Border Protection, which is also under DHS, looked for ways to build a facial recognition system that tracked migrants in its detention centers to see which detainees received certain care, like blankets, medicine or meals, according to an email shared with the Sentinel.

“We have a system that tracks the custodial care and movement of people … while in USBP custody. We are looking to implement a facial recognition piece to this process,” an agent said in an email to Kairos, a Miami-based facial recognition firm that refuses to sell its technology to law enforcement.

In 2017, ICE sought to hire Kairos for a facial recognition system that could automatically identify drivers through their windshields in real time using roadside surveillance cameras, scanning everyone that passes to spot undocumented immigrants or travellers who have overstayed their visas, said Brian Brackeen, the founder of Kairos who rejected the pitch when he was at the company.

“This was technology they were plainly intending to use in the U.S. to identify folks in their everyday lives, in their car,” Brackeen told the Sentinel.

Gualtieri said the FACES system can’t do real-time surveillance. His Sheriff’s Office tested such a system at the St. Pete–Clearwater International Airport over a decade ago, where cameras would scan travellers and run their identities through a database to check for warrants within seconds.

“Everybody coming in was scanned and we were randomly collecting images,” Gualtieri said. “I was a chief deputy at the time when we fully stopped it, and I just didn’t like it. It’s too invasive … it just doesn’t feel right.”

However, Gualtieri’s office in February issued a request for companies to submit ideas on how to build a new facial recognition database ahead of a $1.2 million upgrade the agency is planning for FACES by 2021. The request included, as a minimum requirement, “real-time facial searching capabilities from live surveillance cameras.”

Gualtieri said that language was mistakenly included, saying “that’s nonsense, somebody just messed that up.” He blamed a new biometrics manager at the agency and said the request “really wasn’t reviewed in any high levels of the agency.”

But emails show the agency assembled an eight-person team, including the assistant director for information technology, to draft and revise the request, and the final draft was approved by Gualtieri.

In this Oct. 31, 2018, file photo, demonstrators hold images of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos near their faces during a Halloween-themed protest at Amazon headquarters over the company’s facial recognition system, “Rekognition,” in Seattle.

Tech evolving amid backlash

FACES started out in 2001 with the help of the late Republican congressman Bill Young, a powerful chair of the defense appropriations subcommittee who helped the Pinellas sheriff’s office, in his district, secure grant funding from the Department of Defense and Department of Justice.

The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office courted partner agencies to enroll mugshots into the database as early as 2008 under an agreement with the defense department’s Irregular Warfare Support Program, a post-9/11 counter-terrorism push to increase inter-agency cooperation “intended to solve nontraditional challenges in combating terrorism.”

Combining driver’s licenses into the database began between 2009 and 2013 amid a “statewide data sharing expansion effort,” according to a slide from a PowerPoint presented by the agency in 2013, around when PCSO partnered with more agencies in a “Facial Recognition Partnership Expansion Project.” Today the list of 273 partner agencies includes university police, intelligence exchanges and a broad array of state and federal agencies.

Facial recognition technology is still evolving, and recent studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that face-scanning algorithms from companies like Amazon and Microsoft misidentify dark-skinned women more frequently than white males.

“This is inherently a hurdle that needs to be addressed before implementing such collaborations, not discovered after only to do nothing about it,” said Esteban Garces, the co-executive director for Poder Latinx, a hispanic social justice organization.

Gualtieri called the recent backlash over law enforcement’s use of facial recognition a “created controversy by the media and by people who don’t understand it,” citing success stories in which it has helped officers ensure jail inmates aren’t mistakenly released based on faulty biometric data or been used to identify sex traffickers.

Some cities, like San Francisco, California and Somerville, Mass., have banned police use of the technology, fearing the potential for abuse and its tendency to misidentify some races more frequently than others.

“Facial recognition is here, it’s not going anywhere,” said Melissa Doval, chief executive of Kairos, the facial recognition firm turning down law enforcement clients. “And some people can dig their heels and say ‘no we’re not going to do this,’ or they can work together and come up with a good solution that’s better for everybody.”

Gualtieri said he’d be open to working with regulators on a system that enforces greater oversight over how his deputies use FACES, but thinks banning the technology is counterintuitive to public safety.

“Maybe there’s no abuse happening to begin with,” Gualtieri said. “And maybe this is a solution looking for a problem as opposed to a problem looking for a solution.”

joey.a.roulette@gmail.com

Originally Published: July 12, 2019 at 1:28 PM EDT

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