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In the hands of the police, facial recognition technology is a threat to the human rights of Black and Brown people throughout the U.S. This technology amplifies the racially discriminatory police practices that are already widespread — and as a tool of mass surveillance, it also prevents the free and safe exercise of peaceful assembly and protest.
No one knows this better than Derrick ‘Dwreck’ Ingram, a 29-year old Black Lives Matter organizer and New Yorker. Dwreck was besieged in his apartment by NYPD officers for five hours in an attempted arrest without a warrant, after allegedly assaulting a police officer by shouting loudly into a megaphone at a protest. A reporter spotted one officer holding a document titled “Facial Identification Section Informational Lead Report,” revealing that facial recognition had likely been used to identify and track Dwreck.
Facial recognition technology is now widespread. Private companies have scraped billions of images from social media without permission, and their products are already being used by police departments nationwide in facial recognition systems. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has already used this technology to surveil millions of people in the U.S. and intimidate undocumented immigrants.
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