Facial Recognition and social media scraping in use by Chicago Police Department
Information Certainty: Documented
Deployment Purpose: Criminal investigations, Surveillance
| Summary |
|---|
| 0 |
Products and Institutions:
Status and Events:
| Status | Ongoing |
|---|---|
| Events | Start (2 January 2013, Documented, , No description) |
| Start Date | |
| End Date |
Users:
| Involved Entities | FBI Crime Prevention and Information Center (CPIC) Chicago's Office of Emergency Management (OEMC). |
|---|---|
| Managed by | Chicago Police Department |
| Used by | Chicago Police Department |
Location:
| City | Chicago (IL) |
|---|---|
| Country ⠉ | USA |
Description[ ]
Chicago Police Force uses a range of surveillance tools. In 2013 it began fingerprinting and facial recognition, building an extended network of cameras in public and private locations across the city. In 2020 it was found to have been using Clearview AI. Since then, there has been a settlement in Illinois, reinforcing the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act 2008 (BIPA), to prevent Clearview AI from selling its database to law enforcement and private entities for a period of five years. Clearview also has to provide an opt-out system for residents, and stop offering free trials to individual officers. Chicago Police also have been reported as using Briefcam.
However this does not mean law enforcement has to stop using facial recognition. Furthermore, the Chicago Police Department uses social media surveillance, which is believed to involve them using both fake AI generated faces, and facial recognition, to develop databases of suspected gang members. Chicago Police Department's data is kept in Crime Prevention and Information Center (CPIC), which is a 'fusion center', part of a network of police surveillance bodies created following 9/11. This means that the data collected is opaque and that it is likely difficult or impossible to be removed from these networked databases once part of them.
Documents obtained via FOIA by LPL reveal that in 2013, CPD paid $2.3 million to upgrade its camera network and obtain a custom built facial recognition system from Dataworks Plus, funded via a grant from the TSA. These documents also indicate that CPD continued to pay around $100k a year to Dataworks until at least 2016. It is unclear how CPD has been using FRT since then. In 2020, CPD signed, in secret, a $49,875 contract to use facial recognition technology developed by Clearview AI. Clearview's software identifies individuals by comparing them to billions of facial images that the company scraped from social media platforms, significantly expanding police's ability to identify individuals. CPD ended its contract with Clearview in May 2020 1
Clearview will maintain an opt-out request form on its website, allowing Illinois residents to upload a photo and fill out a form to ensure their faceprints will be blocked from appearing in Clearview’s search results, including for Clearview’s law enforcement users 3
The Chicago Police Department created the Social Media Exploration (SOMEX) Team in 2019. The special order document defining that team, released by The Intercept today, details the department’s strategy of using fake social media profiles to investigate and communicate with people suspected of having committed a crime. Further, the document explains that those fake profiles are to be created with the FBI’s help 2
CPD has released very little information as to how they employ facial recognition technology, although it seems that most of the relevant infrastructure and personnel are located in the Crime Prevention and Information Center (CPIC), located in the Public Safety Headquarters. CPIC is part of a network of over 80 fusion centers around the country, which were created in the wake of 9/11 to gather and share counterterrorism intelligence. Fusion centers have come under a great deal of scrutiny for violating the First Amendment, resisting accountability, and failing to improve counterterrorism efforts 1
To track and deter crime, the Chicago Police Department has a new high-tech analytics center that leverages tens of thousands of police and privatesector video surveillance cameras, as well as gunshot detection platforms, predictive mapping and data analytics. The CPD combines BriefCam video analytics with other capabilities enabling state-of-the-art investigative techniques. Thanks to video content analytics and traditional police detective work, it didn’t take long for the Chicago, IL police to crack a highly unusual and high-profile case of an alleged hate crime early in 2019 4
References
- a b c "Police Surveillance in Chicago: Biometrics". (2022) <https://chicagopolicesurveillance.com/tactics/biometric-databases.html> Accessed: 2022-06-09
- a b "Chicago Cops Can Use Fake Social Media Profiles to Spy On You, With the FBI's Help". (2022) <https://gizmodo.com/online-surveillance-ai-police-spying-chicago-1848955439> Accessed: 2022-06-09
- a b "In Big Win, Settlement Ensures Clearview AI Complies With Groundbreaking Illinois Biometric Privacy Law". (2022) <https://www.aclu-il.org/en/press-releases/big-win-settlement-ensures-clearview-ai-complies-groundbreaking-illinois-biometric> Accessed: 2022-06-09
- a b "BriefCam at Work In Safe Cities". (2022) <https://www.briefcam.com/resources/case-studies/briefcam-at-work-in-safe-cities/> Accessed: 2022-06-26