FC: ACLU investigation says Tampa facecam system a flop, a farce

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 16:52:21 -0500
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: Barry Steinhardt <BSteinhardt () aclu org>
Subject: Drawing A Blank -- ACLU Report on the Failure of Face Recognition 
in Tampa

Declan,

The use of the biometric facial recognition technology, along with video 
surveillance on the streets of Tampa, Florida is an overhyped failure that 
has been seemingly abandoned by police officials, according to a report 
released today by the American Civil Liberties Union.

System logs obtained by the ACLU through Florida's open-records law show 
that the system never identified even a single individual contained in the 
department's database of photographs. And in response to the ACLU's queries 
about the small number of system logs, the department has acknowledged that 
the software -- originally deployed last June, 2001 -- has not been 
actively used since August.

The report  entitled "Drawing a Blank : The Failure of Face Recognition in 
Tampa",  can be found at http://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy/drawing_blank.pdf.

Our announcement can be found at http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n010302a.html.

Barry Steinhardt




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