COLUMBUS – Amid concern about the use of facial-recognition capabilities, Ohio’s attorney general says the state database of driver’s license and law enforcement photos hasn’t been used improperly for mass surveillance or broad dragnets.
Republican Dave Yost ordered a 30-day review of Ohio’s facial-recognition system after an article in The Washington Post noted the potential for federal agencies to use state databases of driver’s license photos as a surveillance tool.
Even so, Yost says he’s ordering training requirements for Ohio officers who use the facial-recognition system and requiring that requests for such searches be handled by the state crime lab until those requirements are met.
“I share the privacy and civil-liberty concerns of those who fear misuse of this powerful identification technology. Ohio’s database is protected by limited access, regular auditing and strict rules about the kind of searches that can be conducted. That applies to state and local law enforcement as well as federal law enforcement.” -Ohio Attorney General David Yost
Yost says, during the period covered by the review, all but 418 of the 11,070 searches in the state’s facial-recognition database. Were carried out by local and state and law enforcement agencies.
The remainder were conducted by federal agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Yost says he’ll appoint advisers to help ensure Ohio’s system is an effective law-enforcement tool that also protects people’s privacy and rights.
He points out that photos from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles are expressly required by state and federal law to be used for law-enforcement purposes and intended to be a means for government to identify people.
“Not only is the license photo used to identify you in traffic stops by police officers, it is routinely used for identification by other government agencies and also by businesses and other private-sector institutions. It also is a safeguard for the licensee, since use of photo IDs makes it harder for a criminal to impersonate someone else,” Yost said.