Public Concerned About Sheriff’s Use Of Surveillance Technology

Security cameras. (Pixabay License).

The public continues to push back against the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) plans for expanded surveillance infrastructure and adoption of facial recognition technology.

At issue are the agency’s use of Flock cameras, an advanced surveillance camera system that scans and reads license plates, running them against law enforcement databases, and its desire to purchase facial recognition services from Biometrica, a Nevada-based company. The MCSO appeared before the Milwaukee County Board’s Committee on Judiciary, Law Enforcement and General Services on Tuesday.

Community members testified to concerns about the sheriff’s office expanding, or adding to, its surveillance capabilities, and the threat the technologies pose to civil liberties. But, more broadly, residents are also concerned about the federal government’s ability to exploit these technologies for its increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement operations or to violate constitutionally protected rights, like free speech.

Sheriff Denita Ball told supervisors in June her office was pursuing a contract and data sharing agreement with Biometrica for facial recognition technology services. The Milwaukee County Board responded with a resolution requesting a county policy governing facial recognition technology that protects civil liberties, First Amendment rights and prevents criminalization of racial and ethnic minorities in Milwaukee.

Earlier this year, Biometrica was negotiating an agreement with the Milwaukee Police Department to provide access to a facial recognition algorithm in exchange for 2.5 million mugshots.

Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director for the ACLU, said Biometrica contracts with other agencies have given the company access to historical and real-time booking and warrant data, which is a concern because Biometrica also markets a service called eMotive that can alert organizations if employees are arrested.

Ka Wade, Biometrica chief privacy officer, told supervisors Tuesday the company is committed to transparency. Wade previously told Urban Milwaukee the firm does not work with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Working with the county’s information management services, the MCSO produced the draft policy presented to supervisors at the committee meeting. It lays out prohibited uses of the technology, who would have access, how the data is stored and a restriction on sharing data outside of the agency.

The MCSO wants to employ facial recognition technology as an investigative tool, Chief Deputy Brian Barkow said. It would not be connected to camera feeds; there would be no live scanning of faces, surveilling or tracking county residents, he said. The agency wants the technology for lead generation: creating a list of suspect identities by feeding an image of a suspect in a crime into the technology and generating a list of probable matches.

“So we get a sexual assault or a non-fatal shooting or a homicide that occurs, and we obtain video — could be from a church or a gas station across the street. We take that image and we run that image through this facial recognition software, and it comes back with a score of possible candidates as to who this, possibly, who this person is,” Barkow said.

The policy dictates a facial recognition match cannot be the sole source of probable cause for an arrest. “Investigators still have to conduct the investigation… the district attorney’s office would never issue okay charges based on something like this… it is a tool that’s utilized to point an investigator potentially in the right direction,” Barkow said.

But community members and activists expressed dissatisfaction with the draft policy and were generally opposed to any adoption of facial recognition technology. Emily Sterk, with the League of Women Voters, said the draft policy contained “dangerously broad language,” and added, “We reiterate our stance, urging Milwaukee County to ban the sheriff’s office current and future use of [facial recognition technology].”

Of additional concern was the agency’s desire to expand a network of high-tech, artificial-intelligence-powered cameras capable of scanning and reading license plates. The cameras are produced by Flock Safety, and the MCSO has already placed a number of them in county-owned parks.

When a vehicle drives past a Flock camera, an image is taken of the car and license plate. The data is stored for 30 days and is searchable by law enforcement agents that have access to Flock. License plates can be flagged as stolen or involved in a crime, and when a Flock camera spots them the system can notify law enforcement, said Matt Johnson, deputy chief information officer for the county’s Information Management Services Division.

Barkow said MCSO does not allow the data collected by its Flock cameras to be used for purposes related to immigration or reproductive health, nor does the sheriff’s office cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations and only shares information with the agency when it is required by federal law.

But other law enforcement agencies have access to the MCSO’s Flock data, and ICE has reportedly accessed data from municipal Flock cameras around the country during immigration enforcement operations. The agency has also used biometric data maintained in law enforcement databases to find immigrants in Milwaukee.

Sup. Justin Bielinski asked Barkow how the MCSO could be certain no one was using the data for immigration- or abortion-related investigations. Flock data has been used by law enforcement in states with abortion bans to track women across state lines to arrest them for receiving abortions.

Barkow conceded it would be impossible to prevent in every circumstance. “There are loopholes,” he said.

Bielinski, who is chair of the law enforcement committee, said the political situation in the U.S. must be a consideration when the introduction of surveillance technologies is proposed. Other countries, for example, don’t have a “wannabe Mussolini as president,” he said.

“So we know that Brad Schimel right now is the acting U.S. Attorney [for the Eastern District of Wisconsin]. We have to operate under the assumption that there is an instance where the federal government might decide to ask for things that they probably shouldn’t have, or to do things in a way that maybe isn’t above board,” Bielinski said.

Sup. Juan Miguel Martinez said he is “vehemently opposed” to facial recognition technology, which he said “would absolutely destroy and shatter public trust completely as it is.”

Emilio De Torre, executive director of the Milwaukee Turners, has been a vocal opponent of surveillance expansion and facial recognition technology use by law enforcement in Milwaukee. He said the MCSO and local government in Milwaukee need to be “extremely cautious” about employing these technologies.

“We’ve heard over and over again… that the federal government is actively accessing surveillance information from Flock cameras, red light cameras, social media, biometric libraries, Ring doorbells and anything else they can get their hands on,” De Torre said. “This is a ridiculously dangerous time to allow any additional surveillance and tracking and face mapping software.”