Technology Helps Ensure There's No Safe Harbor for War Criminals

In its effort to ensure there is no hiding place in the United States for war criminals, genocidaires and other human rights abusers, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has sought to harness the power of innovation, employing automated facial recognition technology and clever software algorithms to identify perpetrators who might be in, or be traveling to, America, officials told AFCEA's 2021 Federal Identity Forum and Expo Tuesday. War Crimes Hunter (WCH) is a series of customized reusable software tools built by the ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Innovation Lab in Crystal City, Virginia. It's used by HSI investigators in the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit to try and identify suspected war criminals or other human rights violators. WCH automates the repetitive administrative work, while leaving key decisions to human analysts, explained Amy Nunes, a section chief in the unit. "We automate what we can automate as much as possible, still keeping an [human] analyst in the loop, because we didn't want to risk getting a bunch of [false positives or junk data] that we didn't need," she said.