Vegas Police Union: Facial Recognition For Thee, But Not For We

Way back in 2020, Tim Cushing wrote about the Las Vegas police and its habit of running low-resolution images through facial recognition software in order to generate leads when conducting investigations. While his post focused on just how those low-res images were used, and sometimes misused, the important thing to recognize for the purposes of this post is that the Vegas police weren’t just using facial recognition technology for its purposes, but were using it widely enough that it wasn’t some limited, targeted use that only came into play when the circumstances involved very high quality images. From that original post:

As is the case everywhere law enforcement uses this tech, low-quality input images are common. Investigating crimes means utilizing security camera footage, which utilizes cameras far less powerful than the multi-megapixel cameras found on everyone’s phones. The Las Vegas Metro Police Department relied on low-quality images for many of its facial recognition searches, documents obtained by Motherboard show.

So, if you were wondering what the Las Vegas police think about the use of facial recognition technology, you have your answer: it’s all aces as far as the police are concerned. That is, it appears, until the cameras are turned around on those same police.

The NFL has rolled out a new credentialling program for its staff at NFL stadiums across the country this year. As part of that new program, the NFL is asking for all kinds of biometrics from anyone that will be working the games, including fingerprints and facial scans for facial recognition purposes, alongside other identifying information such as a home address and phone number.

Despite this technology’s wide use among Vegas police, Las Vegas Police Protective Association president Steve Grammas is telling police officers to refuse to work security at these NFL games.

“They’re going to take your biometric data – your face, and they’re going to use that however they need to,” Grammas says, apparently oblivious to the irony in arguing on behalf of police, who are embracing facial recognition worldwide at an astonishing pace, that collecting biometrics is invasive. Las Vegas Police Captain Dori Koren told MIT Technology Review in 2020 that the force was already using facial recognition.

“They’re going to extend that to their NFL family partners to use your information should they need to. That branches into a lot of places that your biometric data could be exposed to, a lot of people that you may not want it to be.” Grammas says raises fears that biometric data – i.e., a selfie – could fall into the hands of “people who are anti-cop, that support a different agenda from what law and order supports.”

Somehow, I tend to believe that there might be other concerns over how those biometrics are used. You know, perhaps there’s a concern that the data might fall into the wrong hands, specifically hands that might be interested in matching up the faces of police with public appearances by some notorious groups that are out there. Groups that tend to be fascistic, or that might push white supremacy messages, or other political leanings that these same police wouldn’t want to be noted. Perhaps they could be matched up to participants in certain rallies, for instance, or with participants in congressional “tours” such as occurred on January 6th.

But whatever the reason, neither Grammas nor the police department that has said it supports Grammas’ concerns, have bothered to explain why this technology is kosher for use by police against the public but not okay when the camera points at an off-duty police officer.

So I guess that income stream for NFL games will go away for off-duty Vegas police. All because they refuse to live in the same world as the rest of us.