Carnival Cruises, Delta, and 70 Countries Use a Facial Recognition Company You’ve Never Heard Of
NEC has 1,000+ biometrics contracts with agencies around the world
In July 2018, the mayor of Irving, Texas, signed a contract that would dramatically expand how the city’s police department could investigate crimes using facial recognition.
The police department agreed to port its mug shot database into the servers of NEC, the 121-year-old technology giant that built the department’s facial recognition program. With Irving’s 100,000 mug shots uploaded to an NEC service called WideNet, officers and detectives were now bought into a system that also included mug shots from nearby communities, like Grand Prairie and DeSoto, and could conduct searches across departments. According to emails obtained by OneZero through a public records request, the Irving Police Department now uses NEC’s facial recognition six to 10 times per week on average, though just 21% of those searches result in “strong leads.”
For the police department of Irving, a midsize city of 235,000 that sits between Dallas and Fort Worth, NEC was a natural partner. The company advertises itself as the vendor of one of the most accurate facial recognition systems in the world and readily touts its law enforcement bonafides. And…
