BiometricsA first: Armed robber convicted based on Chicago’s facial recognition technology

Pierre Martin became the first person in Chicago to receive a prison sentence after being convicted based on evidence from the city’s facial recognition technology, NeoFace. Martin was sentenced Monday to twenty-two years for two armed robberies carried out on the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train system in January and February 2013. A few weeks after the incidents, Chicago Police Department officials announced that Marin was identified using facial recognition software.

NeoFace allows law enforcement agencies to compare still photos with a database of millions of police mug shots. In Chicago, Martin’s face was identified using a previous mug shot, and after an arrest, witnesses linked Martin to the two robberies. “This case is a great example that these high-tech tools are helping to enhance identification and lead us to defendants that might otherwise evade capture,” state attorney Anita Alvarez told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Designed by NEC, NeoFace is marketed as a tool for government security and border control agencies, but privacy advocates are concerned that the technology may be used for general surveillance, considering the recent revelations about NSA surveillance practices and the agency’s adoption of facial recognition software (see “NSA, other agencies, collect millions of images for large facial recognition databases,” HSNW, 5 June 2014).

the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, noting that more than 24,000 surveillance cameras are connected to Chicago’s computer network, insists that police should use the technology only when they have probable cause that the individual in the image was involved in a crime.

Chicago Police commander Jonathan Lewin, said the NeoFace technology is being used only “in active criminal cases with an unidentified criminal subject.” He added that “there will absolutely be no random surveillance — and facial recognition — of subjects in the public way.”

The Sun-Times reports that CPD acquired NeoFace last June through a $5.4 million federal Transportation Security Administration grant obtained through the CTA. The department’s detective branches and the Criminal Information Prevention Center in police headquarters are equipped with NeoFace work stations, alongside a team of officers trained to use the system.

“This was our first success,” Lewin said of the NeoFace program in July 2013. “So far, Martin is the only one police have arrested with help from the software” but Lewin predicted, “as we pick up our training, you will see ongoing successes.”