Facial recognition used by Baltimore Police Department
Information Certainty: Documented
Deployment Purpose: Criminal investigations, Surveillance
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| Managed by | Baltimore Police Department |
| Used by | Baltimore Police Department |
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Description[ ]
Baltimore Police Department uses facial recognition, along with a range of other surveillance tools such as aerial surveillance, for criminal investigations, but also to track and identify protestors. They have been found to use Cognitec and have in the past used used Geofeedia. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have in the past provided user data to Geofeedia.
Geofeedia, the company behind the social media monitoring technology, fed their information through facial recognition tech, allowed the BPD to track movements of protesters and anti-police actions, arresting those with outstanding warrants “directly from the crowd,” according to the Geofeedia case study of Baltimore, which evaluated the success of their technology during the Freddie Gray protests and was used to market the technology to other police departments 1
All the data included in the map is drawn from publicly available metadata — specifically images, geolocation data, and screen names available on Instagram’s public feed. Still, it’s easy to see how such a tool could be used by police to identify and retain data on protestors at an otherwise impossible scale 4
The use of private companies to carry out military grade aerial surveillance of protests in 2016 has been noted. This programme has since been ended. A ban has been introduced on the use of facial recognition for other private and public actors in Baltimore, however the BPD still uses facial recognition.
Since the beginning of the year, the Baltimore Police Department had been using the plane to investigate all sorts of crimes, from property thefts to shootings. The Cessna sometimes flew above the city for as many as 10 hours a day, and the public had no idea it was there. A company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, based in Dayton, Ohio, provided the service to the police, and the funding came from a private donor. No public disclosure of the program had ever been made 2
The Baltimore City Council recently passed an ordinance, in a vote of 13-2, barring the use of facial recognition technology by city residents, businesses, and most of the city government (excluding the city police department) until December 2022 3
References
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- ^ "Eyes Over Baltimore: How Police Use Military Tech to Secretly Track You". (2017) <https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/eyes-over-baltimore-how-police-use-military-technology-to-secretly-track-you-126885/> Accessed: 2022-06-05
- ^ "Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram surveillance tool was used to arrest Baltimore protestors". (2016) <https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/11/13243890/facebook-twitter-instagram-police-surveillance-geofeedia-api> Accessed: 2022-06-03
- ^ "Secret cameras record Baltimores every move from above". (2016) <https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-surveillance/> Accessed: 2022-06-05
- ^ "City of Baltimore May Criminalize the Use of Facial Recognition Technologies by Businesses". (2021) <https://www.natlawreview.com/article/city-baltimore-may-criminalize-use-facial-recognition-technologies-businesses> Accessed: 2022-06-05