Facial Recognition at the Statue of Liberty
Information Certainty: Speculative
Deployment Purpose: Surveillance
| Summary |
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| 0 |
Products and Institutions:
Status and Events:
| Status | Ongoing |
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| Events | Start (2 January 2014, Documented, , No description) |
| Start Date | |
| End Date |
Users:
| Involved Entities | |
|---|---|
| Managed by | U.S National Park Service U.S Park Police |
| Used by | U.S National Park Service U.S Park Police |
Location:
| City | New York City (NY) |
|---|---|
| Country ⠉ | USA |
Description[ ]
A range of surveillance tools appear to be in use near the Statue of Liberty.
Face recognition was first implemented at the Statue of Liberty in 2002 as part of an attempt to spot suspected terrorists whose mug shots were stored on a federal database. At the time, the initiative was lambasted by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said it was so ineffective that “Osama Bin Laden himself” could easily dodge it 2
After Hurricane Sandy struck Liberty and Ellis Islands in 2012, part of the eight-month restoration project included installing a new surveillance system to help U.S. Park Police (USPP) and the National Park Service (NPS) protect the millions of families who visit each year. The goal was to provide intelligent perimeter security for the islands, complete coverage for the entire interior of the statue, and enhanced coverage of the security screening facilities at the ferry landings in New York and New Jersey. The technology would help park personnel monitor visitor lines, assist ferry operations, and expedite responses to emergencies 1
Total Recall Corporation, a video-centric security technology provider and Axis partner, designed, donated, and installed a cutting-edge security solution that included more than 160 megapixel and HDTV-quality fixed dome and pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) network cameras from Axis controlled by a sophisticated Milestone XProtect® enterprise-class video management system (VMS) running on 11 Pivot3 vSTAC Watch converged storage and compute appliances 1
On one memorable occasion, a distraught woman told park rangers she had been searching for her husband for over two hours. Based on her description of her spouse, security used the cameras to track his whereabouts almost instantaneously and reunite the couple 1
Liberty Island took such a severe battering during Sandy that it has stayed closed to the public ever since—thwarting the prospect of a pilot of the new software. But the statue, which attracts more than 3 million visitors annually according to estimates, is finally due to open again on July 4. In March, Statue of Liberty superintendent Dave Luchsinger told me that plans were underway to install an upgraded surveillance system in time for the reopening. “We are moving forward with the proposal that Total Recall has come up with,” he said, adding that “[new] systems are going in, and I know they are state of the art.” When it came to my questions about face recognition, though, things started to get murky. Was that particular project back on track? “We do work with Cognitec, but right now because of what happened with Sandy it put a lot of different pilots that we are doing on hold,” Peter Millius, Total Recall’s director of business development, said in a phone call. “It’s still months away, and the facial recognition right now is not going to be part of this phase.” Then, he put me on hold and came back a few minutes later with a different position—insisting that the face-recognition project had in fact been “vetoed” by the Park Police and adding that I was “not authorized” to write about it. That was weird, but it soon got weirder. About an hour after I spoke with Total Recall, an email from Cognitec landed in my inbox. It was from the company’s marketing manager, Elke Oberg, who had just one day earlier told me in a phone interview that “yes, they are going to try out our technology there” in response to questions about a face-recognition pilot at the statue. Now, Oberg had sent a letter ordering me to “refrain from publishing any information about the use of face recognition at the Statue of Liberty.” It said that I had “false information,” 2