Federal Manager's Daily Report

Only three of the 13 federal law enforcement agencies that agreed to GAO recommendations last year to more closely control their use facial recognition technology have acted since then to put those recommendations into effect, GAO has said.

A witness told a House Science Committee hearing that the Secret Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Food and Drug Administration have put in place mechanisms to track which non-federal systems with FRT they use to support investigative activities. However, she said that even those agencies have not taken the additional recommended step of assessing the risks of using such systems, including privacy and accuracy-related considerations.

A survey GAO conducted last year of 24 Cabinet departments and large independent agencies found that 18 either owned such technology or accessed it through other federal agencies, and ten of those had definite plans at the time to expand its use. Agencies reported using it for purposes including traveler verification, generating leads in criminal investigations, verifying identities of people visiting agency websites, and screening for access to facilities by their own employees or to unlock their agency-issued smartphones.

Separately, GAO reported last year that by failing to track their employees’ use of facial recognition technology owned by third parties, many federal law enforcement agencies are at risk of violating privacy laws and of improperly disclosing details of investigations. There is also a risk that non-federal system owners will share sensitive information with the public or others, or that such databases will be breached, it said.

The testimony repeated GAO recommendations that agencies track the use of the technology and conduct risk assessments, saying that is needed to “mitigate any risks to themselves and the public.”

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