#Ice driver license facial recognition licenseThe commercial license plate reader database and the Maryland database share a number of similarities: They are both databases maintained outside of ICE’s control that contain vast amounts of information (including information not relevant to ICE’s purposes), and there is risk that both databases contain inaccurate information. Indeed, that ICE conducted a PIA in 2017 for its use of commercial automatic license plate readers strongly suggests that a PIA is necessary for ICE’s access of state databases. As the guidance document explains, a PIA “examines how the Department has incorporated privacy concerns throughout its development, design, and deployment of a technology, program, or rulemaking.” To date, ICE has not made public a PIA in connection with its search of state facial recognition databases. However, as a Department of Homeland Security guidance document makes clear, two statutes-the E-Government Act of 2002 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002-generally require the government to complete a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), a formal document that addresses potential privacy concerns, when it deploys new systems that use personally identifiable information. And the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act allows for state motor vehicle officials to disclose personal information to federal law enforcement. (While the Maryland legislature has not approved ICE’s access to the state database, existing state law seems to permit access for federal law enforcement purposes lawmakers have recently introduced bills that would require ICE to obtain a warrant to access the system.)įederal statutes and regulations, meanwhile, grant ICE broad investigative authority. ICE’s use of the Maryland database raises at least two significant legal questions: first, whether ICE has complied with federal laws governing the use of new technologies that implicate privacy rights and second, whether these searches are subject to the Fourth Amendment. Clarence Lam had “gleaned from meetings with agency officials that it started with a memorandum of understanding around 2012.” An ICE spokeswoman told the Post that the agency is complying with federal law. The Post article noted that, unlike arrangements between ICE and other states that require state officials to run the facial recognition searches, “Maryland records show that ICE officials across the country can independently search without outside approval.” While the legal basis for the agreement has not been made public, according to the Post, Maryland Sen. A Maryland government document explains that MIRS, which the state government has operated since 2011, allows law enforcement to compare images of unidentified individuals to images collected by the state’s motor vehicle and criminal justice agencies. “It’s a betrayal of immigrants’ trust for the to turn around and let ICE run warrantless searches on their faces,” Harrison Rudolph, a facial recognition expert at Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology, told the Post.Īccording to a letter from a state official that the Post obtained, over the past two years, ICE has logged more than 50 “sessions” in the Maryland database, known as the Maryland Image Repository System (MIRS). Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have accessed, without obtaining judicial process, a Maryland facial recognition database that contains photographs of more than 275,000 undocumented immigrants who have obtained special driver’s licenses under a 2013 state law. The Washington Post reported recently that U.S.
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