Mobile Fortify app being used to scan faces of citizens and immigrants – but its use has prompted a severe backlash
Immigration enforcement agents across the US are increasingly relying on a new smartphone app with facial recognition technology.
The app is named Mobile Fortify. Simply pointing a phone’s camera at their intended target and scanning the person’s face allows Mobile Fortify to pull data on an individual from multiple federal and state databases, some of which federal courts have deemed too inaccurate for arrest warrants.
The US Department of Homeland Security has used Mobile Fortify to scan faces and fingerprints in the field more than 100,000 times, according to a lawsuit brought by Illinois and Chicago against the federal agency, earlier this month. That’s a drastic shift from immigration enforcement’s earlier use of facial recognition technology, which was otherwise limited largely to investigations and ports of entry and exit, legal experts say.
The app’s existence was first uncovered last summer by 404 Media, through leaked emails. 404 Media also reported, in October, about internal DHS documents that say people cannot refuse to be scanned by Mobile Fortify.
