Wolfcom
Institution Sector: Security
Description[edit | ]
Wolfcom, a company that makes technology for police, is pitching body cameras with live facial recognition to law enforcement groups across the United States, OneZero has learned. It’s a move that pushes against industry norms: Axon, the largest manufacturer of body cameras in the United States, declared last year that it would not put the invasive technology in its hardware, citing “serious ethical concerns.” NEC, which sells live facial recognition elsewhere in the world, has also not sold it to U.S. law enforcement.[1]
Staff[edit | ]
- Founder: Peter Austin Onruang
- CEO: Tiffany Wang
- CTO: Mohamed Thoyyib
Clients[edit | ]
Wolfcom claims to have sold body cameras to at least 1,500 police departments, universities, and federal organizations across the country. It has been developing live facial recognition for the Halo, Wolfcom’s newest body camera model, according to documents and a video obtained by OneZero through public records requests[1].
- Los Lunas Police Department
Technology[edit | ]
“With Realtime Facial Recognition, WOLFCOM hopes to give our friends in Law Enforcement tools that will help them identify if the person they are talking to is a wanted suspect, a missing child or adult, or a person of interest,” Wolfcom founder Peter Austin Onruang wrote in a May 14, 2019, email to the Noble Police Department in Oklahoma.[1]
In the May 2019 email, Onruang asked police departments to help test the facial recognition software. Other emails obtained by OneZero between Wolfcom and police departments in Los Lunas, New Mexico, and Bakersfield, California, as well as the Hardin County Sheriff’s Department in Ohio, show similar messages sent in May[1].
“Let’s say a police officer in Arizona two months ago had taken a photo of this guy. It would recognize that and then tell our officer, ‘Hey, you know what? This guy was in Arizona for maybe battery against a police officer,’” Lieutenant Jose Hernandez, of the Los Lunas Police Department, told OneZero. However, it’s not clear which databases the Wolfcom software would be searching or whether it would be able to access information from multiple police departments.[1]