Despite community pushback, the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office and Milwaukee Police Department are considering expanding their use of facial recognition technology (FRT). In exchange for MCSO and MPD access to Biometrica's facial recognition software, the Nevada tech company would receive around 2.5 million mugshots and other county jail records.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, Milwaukee’s Equal Rights Commission and the majority of the Milwaukee Common Council have come out in opposition to the use of FRT — citing civil rights concerns including the technology's disproportionate misidentification of people of color.
Others, like Emilio De Torre from the Milwaukee Turners, have voiced concerns over how data collected from facial recognition technology could be weaponized amid the Trump Administration's mass deportation efforts.
"Anything that is recorded and aggregated by a police department will be accessed by ICE and the federal government and used against folks in the way that we currently see ICE moving against folks now," De Torre says. "And I think that is an abomination."
De Torre is also a member of WUWM’s Advisory Board. He recently wrote an op-ed for the Shepherd Express, arguing that local facial recognition data is bound to end up in the hands of federal authorities.
"Where that data goes, who has access to it, what type of biometric data they're collecting from our faces now ... or where they're going to trade it or sell it — it's all a big, gray mystery," he says. "And I think that erodes the trust of Milwaukeeans."
WUWM reached out to the Milwaukee Police Department for comment, but did not hear back by our deadline.
