Facial recognition out of control? Half of US adults have their faces on police databases

The research distinguishes between using face recognition to check the ID of someone being legally held and scans of people walking by surveillance cameras. New research shines a light on US law enforcement's unchecked use of surveillance cameras and facial recognition to scan the public. One in two US adults are now in a law-enforcement face-recognition database of some description, according to a new report by Georgetown University's Law Center on Privacy & Technology. The report, entitled'The Perpetual Line-up: Unregulated police face recognition in America' estimates that law-enforcement facial-recognition systems now have information on 117 million US adults. As the report notes, facial recognition is a mature technology and is used legitimately to combat serious and violent crimes.