Hundreds of Police Departments Have Secretly Created Public Safety Watchlists Using Facial Recognition

December 21, 2018 in News by RBN Staff

 

via: Tenth Amendment Center | By: MassPrivateI

To everyone that thinks secret watchlists are nothing more than a conspiracy theory, I give you, law enforcement’s secret public safety watchlists.

The name of the company responsible for creating public safety watchlists – Suspect Technologies – should say it all but I digress.

A recent article in Xconomy reveals that law enforcement is using Suspect Technologies facial recognition software to create secret public safety watchlists.

“Suspect Technologies is also working to pilot a real-time service next year by monitoring public surveillance video feeds with its facial recognition software and cross-referencing it all against a public safety watchlist, CEO Jacob Sniff says. He explained the plans but declined to identify the law enforcement client.”

“We have an agency early adopter, his conception is he’s going to have 10 facial recognition cameras in town: one in the police station lobby, some at the Greyhound bus locations, city hall, even the public pool area,” Sniff says. “He’s going to be scanning people’s faces against a small public watchlist.”

Sniff claims that at least 200 hundred police departments are secretly using his software. Sniff said, “Suspect’s software is being used by a couple hundred law enforcement agencies” but declined to identify them.

A look at Suspect Technologies “solutions” section reveals that they have partnered with artificial intelligence company NVIDIA.

NVIDIA is no stranger to helping law enforcement spy on the public. Last year, I revealed that NVIDIA and COBAN Technologies (CT) have been trying to create 360-degree facial recognition police cars.

“CT’s technology is designed to work with up to six cameras, so police departments could choose to turn their vehicles into 360-degree cameras, making it easier to identify faces.”

How will these companies convince the public to accept public safety watchlists?

Suspect Technologies CEO Sniff hinted that corporations will use loyalty rewards to help convince the public to accept them.

According to Xconomy, Sniff said, “that eventually the public will get used to having their faces scanned by law enforcement, advertisers, and technology companies; he cites Apple, Delta, and Hertz as already commercializing the technology.”

What he is really saying is Hertz, Delta and every facial recognition company plan to use loyalty rewards and quicker check-in/checkout lines to convince the public to accept being watchlisted. (Click here to see how Delta Air Lines owns 5% of CLEAR.)

As I mentioned earlier, real-time public safety watchlists are not the only thing Americans should be worried about.

According to an article in PRWeb, a company called Biometrica Systems announced that they have created a facial recognition software program called eMotive that will conduct real-time 24×7 background checks on everyone.

Biometrica’s Director of Product Architecture, Kevin King, said “eMotive was a unique platform because it continuously provided background information on individuals.”

Biometrica claims that their software will only be used to notify employers when their employees have been arrested. But is that really what eMotive will be used for?

Clicking on Biometrica’s “Fusion Center” link reveals that their software will almost certainly be used by law enforcement to conduct secret criminal background checks.

“Biometrica’s Fusion Center is the hub from where our global security and surveillance operations are managed. It is also the connection point for the data aggregated through our multi-layered private sector networks and multi-jurisdictional law enforcement watchlists, and is therefore uniquely poised to do as the President asked.”

The fact that Biometrica even has a “Fusion Center” should send shock waves across the country.

According to Biometrica, their (Fusion Center) software secretly assigns people “threat vectors” which is just a fancy way of saying “risk assessments.”

“The BFC also has an internal risk metric assigned to a particular ID, providing a client with a “threat vector” of the person or persons concerned.”

Biometrica’s “law enforcement” link reveals their plan to become “the world’s largest private, encrypted, and law enforcement-verified facial recognition database.”

What is truly terrifying is that law enforcement is using Biometrica’s multi-million person database to identify alleged terrorists, gang members and criminals. Biometrica even boasts about providing access to DARPA’s facial recognition software.

If you want more proof that private corporations will use Biometrica to conduct secret 24×7 background checks on everyone. I invite you to check out their “Casinos” link which boasts that their software allows “customers to run operational real-time facial recognition scans of any individual on their property.”

Biometrica also claims that their software gives “customers (Casinos) access to the software and systems that will help them create their own encrypted, private platform-agnostic whitelists and blacklists.”

According to Statista.com there are more than 500 Casinos in the U.S. which means that there are at least 500 secret private watchlist and blacklists that Americans have no knowledge of.

There is no denying it, police and corporations are creating secret public safety watchlists and blacklists of everyone.

I am a former private investigator turned civil rights, privacy and Homeland Insecurity blogger.

I took up investigative blogging because there are very few independent reporters left in our country.

I am also a member of the Digital Fourth. (https://warrantless.org/)