Cops Used Previously Undisclosed Facial Recognition System To Identify Protestor Accused Of Assault

At an otherwisepeaceful protestin Washington , D.C. this past June , one meeter is alleged to have punched an officer in the face before fleeing . According to court documentsreviewedby The Washington Post , police institute their culprit by mining cellphone footage from the protest posted on Twitter , using a previously unknown facial acknowledgment program .

The Post describes that the soul — Michael Joseph Peterson Jr — was identified after the Twitter footage was flow through the National Capital Region Facial Recognition Investigative Leads System ( NCRFRILS ) a pilot program of the suburban Maryland nonprofit Metropolitan Washington Council of Government . Searching online for anything interrelate to the NCRFRILS wo n’t turn up much , even though it has allegedly been active since 2017 and has been used by more than a twelve Union agency . A Council spokesperson say the Post that NCRFRILS was never publicly announced because the programme is still in a test phase .

Still , the facial friction match producted by NCRFRILS , along with a backpack find at the aspect of the crime containing one of Peterson ’s ID carte du jour , solidified him as the defendant .

Photo: Natasha Moustache (Getty Images)

This isfarfromthefirsttime that federal authorities have been caught hire in domestic surveil masses againstprotesters . Nor is it facial acknowledgement ’s launching seek out alleged ne’er - do - wells at such events : in August , an NBC News investigationrevealedthat Miami law used it to identify a woman criminate of throwing rocks at an officer mid - protest ; that same calendar month , the PostfoundPhiladelphia police allegedly turn to this package to cross down protestors accused of vandalise constabulary cars ; police force in New Yorkconfirmedroughly a week afterward that they , too , used similar software package to get hold a protestor who allegedly shout into an officer ’s auricle with a loud-hailer .

Fairfax County Police Major Christian Quinn , who head the NCRFRILS program , told the Post that because the software is only used to generate lede in investigations , its use does n’t need to be disclosed to the defendant in question . He also claim the software is not used to surveil peaceful protest . According to Quinn , the 1.4 million trope that make up the NCRFRILS database are descend from mugshots supplied from partnering agencies . This is n’t particularly reassuring : The month of the incident in D.C. ’s LaFayette Square , more than 10,000protestors were alleged to have been arrest , many of whom were charged with non - violentmisdemeanorslike breaking curfew , and the subsequentlynot shoot .

The Post states that NCRFRILS has been used over 12,000 clock time since 2019 , and Quinn told the composition the system has generated around 2,600 leads . He was not able to posit how many of those leads resulted in an arrest .

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