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General Intelligence
The U.S. May Soon Scan New Immigrants’ Faces, Irises, Voices, and DNA
If enacted, the personal information of more than 70% of those applying for immigration will be entered into a DHS database.
OneZero’s General Intelligence is a roundup of the most important artificial intelligence and facial recognition news of the week.
The Department of Homeland Security is looking to scan the faces, irises, voices, and DNA of millions more people per year, according to new rules proposed by the agency.
The rules mean that DHS will collect sensitive data like iris scans, palm prints, and voice recordings from a projected 6 million people seeking to immigrate to the U.S. per year, including children under 14. If the rules go into effect as written, the personal information of more than 70% of those applying for immigration will be entered into a DHS database, depending on what kind of immigration status they’re applying for. Many will also have to pay an additional $85 biometrics processing fee.
DHS claims that the collection of data from children, especially their DNA, is meant to help fight human trafficking at the border by verifying that children are related to the adults transporting them across U.S. borders.
The DHS rules explicitly say that biometric data obtained through the immigration process would be kept and shared with law enforcement.
These new rules put immigrants under a form of algorithmic surveillance. Being in a law enforcement database puts people not suspected of any wrongdoing as a possible endpoint for an algorithm looking for a match in a criminal investigation. One poor-quality image uploaded for a facial recognition match could put a new immigrant under suspicion based on a faulty search.
Algorithms like the ones used by DHS and federal law enforcement are also subject to bias on racial and gender lines, meaning they are more likely to serve incorrect matches when the subject is not white and male.
These biometric tests don’t just expand the surveillance of immigrants — they are also incredibly costly. DHS says that this new initiative could cost…
