Federal agencies are worried face masks may be used to evade facial recognition technology

The The US Department of Homeland Security is reportedly worried that face coverings will stymie the police's use of facial recognition technology. According to a report from The Intercept, a bulletin drafted by the DHS discusses the effects of widespread use of face coverings in a correspondence with other federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 'The potential impacts that widespread use of protective masks could have on security operations that incorporate face recognition systems -- such as video cameras, image processing hardware and software, and image recognition algorithms -- to monitor public spaces during the ongoing Covid-19 public health emergency and in the months after the pandemic subsides,' reads the bulletin according to The Intercept. The bulletin, which was obtained via a trove of police documents leaked in the'BlueLeaks' hack on law enforcement agencies, mentions that the masks could be used by extremists to avoid facial recognition technology but says there is no current evidence that any such group is currently doing so. '[There is] no specific information that violent extremists or other criminals in the United States are using protective face coverings to conduct attacks,' reads the document.