The U.S. Department of the Interior plans to purchase six Clearview AI accounts for investigations involving missing and murdered Indigenous people, human trafficking and internet crimes against children.
A federal contracting notice describes a proposed sole-source, firm-fixed-price purchase for the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Justice Services and its Missing and Murdered Unit. The department is preparing the purchase and conducting market research before making an award.
The department says the facial-recognition platform would help investigators identify and locate missing people, crime victims and suspects. Firms that believe they can meet the requirement can submit capability statements and pricing information by noon on September 22 as part of the agency’s market research.
Clearview’s existing service compares a submitted photograph with facial images collected from publicly accessible online sources. It returns possible matches that investigators can use as leads, connecting an image from a case with material that may help establish a person’s identity.
The company already supplies other federal investigative users. Procurement records previously documented an Immigration and Customs Enforcement purchase of Clearview software, with an initial obligation of $3.75 million and a performance period extending into 2027. That DHS purchase is separate from Interior’s proposed six-account acquisition.
Clearview has also been testing InquiryIQ, an experimental web-research assistant designed to expand a facial-search lead into an online profile. The company said the prototype had not been shipped or pitched to law-enforcement customers and had no planned release in its existing form.
The prototype’s functions include searching for possible aliases, employers, contact details and associates, with findings presented for an investigator to accept or reject. Clearview has described human verification as part of that experimental workflow. Interior’s notice concerns access to its facial-recognition service, not an announced deployment of InquiryIQ.
The Missing and Murdered Unit works on unresolved cases involving American Indian and Alaska Native people. The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates approximately 4,200 missing and murdered Indigenous-person cases remain unsolved.
The planned accounts would place the face-search capability with personnel handling those cases alongside trafficking and child-protection investigations. The procurement remains at the notice and market-research stage, with the department seeking responses from other firms that believe they can provide the required services.
Sources: FedScoop
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
