Via Joseph Cox at 404 Media:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a new mobile phone app that can identify someone based on their fingerprints or face by simply pointing a smartphone camera at them…
Is ICE using this new tool of theirs fairly and mindfully, I briefly pretend to wonder…
A video posted to social media this month shows apparent ICE officers carefully pointing their phones at a protester in his vehicle, but it is not clear if the officers were taking ordinary photos or using this tool.
Intimidation and/or fishing for an excuse to fuck with someone. That’s about what I expected.
I actually do wonder if they’ve worked any of facial recognition’s better-known bugs out…
It’s better than some other studies I’ve seen, at least…
The “over 99 percent on average” in the first paragraph is the obvious intended pull quote, but I can’t help but notice other numbers like 88% and 97%. But frankly, 99% isn’t good enough; I’d like to avoid a 1% chance of being kidnapped and shipped to a hellhole prison in a country I’ve never visited, too, thank you very much.
I’m going to go ahead and guess that ICE doesn’t mind a few false positives here, not just based on my assessment of their character as a group of alleged humans, but based on the law enforcement profession’s known love of low-effort false positives. Excuse me while I quote Techdirt again …
Here’s just a short (and very incomplete) list of the conclusions reached by cheap, unreliable field drug tests deployed by cops:
I’m sure that the people “mistakenly” flagged as illegal immigrants by this phone app and shipped off to some hellhole will take little to no comfort at all at how predictable it all is.
Ray of Infamy 
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