Milwaukee Police's 'Shady' Deal: Trading Millions Of Mugshots For Facial Recognition Tech

The Milwaukee Police Department is mulling a cartoonishly 'shady' deal where it is willing to trade 2.5 million mugshots to a private company in exchange for free access to facial recognition software. According to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, police officials announced the potential deal at the city's Fire and Police Commissions meeting last week.

Under the proposed deal, the department would receive two free search licenses from Biometrica, a software company already working with other law enforcement agencies in the US -- in exchange for mugshots and jail records spanning decades.

"We recognise the very delicate balance between advancement in technology and ensuring we as a department do not violate the rights of all of those in this diverse community," Milwaukee Police Chief of Staff Heather Hough said during an April 17 meeting.

"While we would like to acquire the technology to assist in solving cases, being transparent with the community that we serve far outweighs the urgency to acquire," she later said in an email.

The proposed agreement has so far made no mention about informing individuals or asking for their consent. Although Wisconsin is an open records state, meaning arrest records, including mughsots are available in the public domain, the legal purview of the deal remains sketchy.

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Social media reacts

Reacting to the proposed deal, the majority of social media users called out the Milwaukee PD for compromising the privacy of people.

"One shady organisation acting in self-serving faith with another shady organisation. Poetic," said one user while another added: "Woof. Is this not a plot point in the TV show Class of '09?'

A third commented: "These systems are notoriously poor. Bias is significant. Bias is worse with people of colour. Also, surveillance bad."

Studies have shown that facial recognition systems exhibit bias, especially against people of colour. Additionally, the facial recognition companies often train their systems on stolen or borrowed datasets. In 2023, it was revealed that Clearview AI, which helped the US police during the January 6 riots, had scraped 30 billion images from platforms such as Facebook without permission from the users.