Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration Customs Enforcement agents use state department of motor vehicle databases for facial-recognition purposes, reveal newly released documents. These records, obtained by researchers with Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology and shared with The Washington Post, contain thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents, and emails over the past five years.The Washington Post reports that “DMV records contain the photos of a vast majority of a state’s residents, most of whom have never been charged with a crime,” affecting millions of Americans whose photos are being used without their knowledge. Lawmakers across the aisle have criticized the technology as a “dangerous, pervasive and error-prone surveillance tool.”
Read moreThe Atlantic: This Is Exactly What Privacy Experts Said Would Happen
According to a statement that the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency released last week, photos of travelers and their vehicle license plates snapped at a US border control point have been hacked. In an email statement to journalists, CBP confirmed that an undisclosed subcontractor transferred copies of license plates and travelers’ photos from federal servers to its own company network without CPB’s authorization. CBP reports that its own servers were unharmed by any cyber attack.
Read moreInconsistent Government Action
ProPublica: “Extreme Digital Vetting of Visitors to the U.S. Moves Forward Under a New Name”
At a tech industry conference hosted by the Government Technology & Services Coalition last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) invited software providers to begin the process of creating algorithms that would monitor the social media accounts of visa holders deemed to be a high risk in order to assess potential threats to the US. The agency announced that they would need tools equipped with “risk-based matrices” that would continue social media surveillance throughout these visa holders’ stay in the US so that ICE may predict any threats. These requests are the first clear plans showing ICE’s intent to augment tougher visa vetting with the monitoring of social media through a program now named “Visa Lifecycle Vetting.”
Read moreTelegraph: “Your Smartphone Could Be Your Next Passport”
The modern smartphone is an amazing device. Apart from the magic of making phone calls, browsing the Internet, and sending emails and texts to your heart’s content, it can control your home thermostat, be used as a level, measure heart rates, and at some point in the near future, may act as a passport for international travel. De La Rue, a British company that prints banknotes and also produces passports, is currently developing technology to store passports within mobile phones, potentially allowing people the freedom to travel without hard copies of their passport.
“Technology is at the forefront of De La Rue’s business, and as you would expect we are always looking at new innovations and technology solutions for our customers around the world,” a spokesman told the Telegraph. “Paperless passports are one of many initiatives that we are currently looking at, but at the moment it is a concept that is at the very early stages of development.”
The “paperless passports” could be stored on a smartphone and accessed by immigration officials similar to how readers can scan modern passports with readable chips. “Digital passports on your phone will require new hardware on the device in order to securely store the electronic passport so it cannot be copied from the phone,” David Jevans, who works for security company Proofpoint, told the Telegraph. “It will also have to be communicated wirelessly to passport readers, because doing it onscreen like an airline ticket QR code can be copied or spoofed.” While the prospect of not having to worry about remembering your passport when traveling may be beneficial, the security challenges may be difficult to overcome, especially since phones are especially susceptible to being stolen and certain phones can reportedly be quickly unlocked.
Heading toward a paperless future, Australia has been the first country to make the first step with a trial run of “cloud passports.” The result of a hack-athon held by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs, which “culminated in an X-Factor style audition before the secretary Peter Varghese, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop, Assistant Minister Steve Ciobo and Chris Vein from the World Bank,” the “cloud passport” will store the traveler's identity and biometrics data in a cloud to be securely accessed, the details of which are still in development. As with a passport in a phone, critics point out the security concerns with sensitive personal and biographic information as well as travel information stored in an accessible cloud for every individual in the country. "We wouldn't do it if it were not able to be secure,” Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said in CNet. “We are just trialling new ideas and we are just in the early stages of discussion.”
USCIS Introduces Emma, Their New Virtual Assistant
Emma wants to help you with your immigration questions!
US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) is getting ready to debut Emma, their new virtual assistant. Billed as an “innovative way to help you find information” on USCIS.gov, Emma will be located at the top right of the USCIS.gov homepage and when clicked, will open up into a chat window. As indicated in the preview, Emma gives an immediate written and spoken response to questions and will also look for specific pages on USCIS.gov and automatically refer the user to these pages for more information.
According to USCIS’s email announcing Emma’s debut: “Emma is still learning so that in the future she can answer many different questions about the services USCIS provides.” USCIS is thus encouraging users to ask Emma questions as the more questions Emma is asked, the “smarter” Emma will become.
Hi, Emma!
We tested Emma out briefly this afternoon with some questions:
“How do file an I-90?”
Emma sent us to the I-90, Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card page. Nice job, Emma!
“How do I apply for employment authorization?”
Emma sent us to the I-765, Application for Employment Authorization page. Again, nice work!
“My O-1 has been pending for two months. How do I quickly get the case adjudicated?”
Emma provided information on the O-1 page but didn’t address what action to take to either convert the case to premium processing or file a service request for cases pending outside normal processing times. Something to work on, Emma.
“My case is outside normal processing times. What do I do?”
This time Emma was a little more helpful. She said: “We usually processes cases in the order received. Please check our website for the normal processing times for your case type. If your case has been pending longer than the processing time posted on our website, select the link below to submit an inquiry...
“How do I sponsor my employee?”
Emma rather unhelpfully gave us information on the Affidavit of Support, Form I-864, normally used for family-based immigrants to show they have adequate means of financially support. So this is another question where Emma could definitely improve her response.
“When will comprehensive immigration reform pass?”
We decided to get a little more advanced. Emma gave us the pages for applying for a Green Card and for citizenship, which doesn't quite answer it. More relevant pages would include USCIS.gov's page on President Obama's executive actions and also the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) page.
"Do you read dbvisablog.com?"
Emma's response was thoughtful if disappointing: "I don't have a favorite book, but I do enjoy reading A Guide to Naturalization. It is extremely helpful if you are becoming a U.S. citizen."
A New Way of Thinking
According to USCIS, Emma’s development team will examine every question Emma answers incorrectly or is unable to answer and then “teach” Emma how to answer that question in the future. USCIS is hoping the expanded database will mean better customer service when Emma is ready to debut and, we believe, serve as an alternative to USCIS’s 1-800 representatives, which historically have not always been as helpful or well informed in responding to clients’ more complicated questions.
USCIS states: “Emma is an example of a new way of thinking about making our online tools and services as useful as possible. Your insights and collaboration throughout this process will help make this happen.” At this time, Emma works best with Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Internet Explorer 9, USCIS reports. (We had a slight issue using Emma with Firefox, though Chrome seemed to work fine). Users are also encouraged to send any issues or problems they experience using Emma to askemma@uscis.dhs.gov.
We look forward to working with Emma in the future!
UPDATE DECEMBER 4, 2015: Emma is live! After a few months of testing, USCIS has launched Emma this week on USCIS.gov. Emma answers questions in English with the goal of appropriately navigating users to relevant USCIS web pages. While Emma can answer many basic questions, her knowledge base is still growing, and as customers ask more questions, Emma gets smarter and can better assist future customers.
At this time, Emma can be accessed on a desktop or laptop, but soon she’ll be expanding to mobile devices. Her Spanish language capabilities will be arriving early next year. To ask Emma a question go to USCIS.gov and click “Ask a Question” in the upper right-hand corner of the page.