FBI Using Facial Recognition to Identify US Capital Insurgents: Report

According to a report from Boston 25 News, federal authorities in the US are using facial recognition technology to sort through more than 100,000 pieces of video footage in order to try and identify individuals from the January 6 siege on the US Capitol building.

FBI investigators will need to rely heavily on biometric identification technology as they try to sift through footage of large crowds and pick out and identify individuals storming the Capitol, assaulting officers, and damaging property.

“My heart goes out to them, they’re working around the clock right now,” said Kurt Vied, managing director of operations at Signal 88 Security. “I remember what those days are like.”

Vied worked with the FBI to try and identify suspects in the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon. That situation was different, however, as it only involved a pair of suspects – American brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev – as opposed to possibly hundreds or even thousands in the case of the January 6 attacks.

“There’s so much footage that they’re going to be overwhelmed, and they are overwhelmed, they were overwhelmed during the Boston bombing and that was one scene with two people,” said Vied. “You can imagine the dozens and dozens of people that they have to look at.”

It’s unconfirmed which facial recognition solution the FBI will be using, though DC has not yet banned the use of controversial firm Clearview AI.

Massachusetts was the latest to ban the police use of facial recognition software in December of 2020, though the state can still conduct searches if a proper warrant is obtained.

“One of the reasons why I was so aggressive about maintaining access to that facial recognition technology was because I believed it was an important tool for dealing with issues like the one that took place in Washington last week,” said Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. “If any of those roads lead back to people in Massachusetts, I fully expect those folks will get arrested and prosecuted as they should be.”

Source: Boston 25 News

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January 14, 2021 – by Tony Bitzionis