DENVER — Concerns are growing as multiple media outlets report federal agencies are expanding their use of facial recognition technology at protests.
Federal agencies report using the technology to find protesters who have committed crime such as vandalism.
According to The New York Times, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using two facial recognition programs in Minnesota, including one made by Clearview AI and another made by Palantir.
The Palantir app, called Elite, combines government and commercial data.
“This allows the agents to sift through huge amounts of data to essentially create kind of Yelp listings of potentially deportable people," explained Jonathon Booth, University of Colorado Law School associate professor. "They can filter, they can sort... They can create target lists. They can have maps of where they believe these people congregate. The legality is unclear. You know, this hasn't been tested in court. It certainly, I would say, goes against our values of individual freedom and First Amendment, but it's a little unclear. There haven't yet been any lawsuits about this.”
Palantir is the highest-valued company in Colorado.
Several immigrant rights groups have organized protests outside of Palantir in Denver for working with ICE.
Bloomberg has reported about a Minneapolis woman who said an ICE agent used facial recognition technology on her and a few days later, her TSA PreCheck/Global Entry privileges were revoked.
