The Meta face recognition system for its smart glasses was built on software licensed from Rank One Computing, a Pentagon and police contractor, according to a WIRED investigation. Reporters Dell Cameron and Dhruv Mehrotra found a leaked, still-active licence tying Meta to a vendor that draws roughly 80 per cent of its revenue from government clients.
Rank One is no consumer startup.
The Denver firm, founded in 2015 and newly listed on Nasdaq this February, supplies face recognition to US police and the military. Its technology has verified prisoners for the US Marshals Service since 2021; the Navy’s criminal investigators bought its video tool; and US Special Operations Command funded work that, the company says, can identify a face from up to a kilometre away.
Its board is stacked with former CIA, FBI and Pentagon officials, and its chief executive once ran the FBI division that keeps the bureau’s biometric databases.
The Meta face recognition code, already pulled
