"Mobile Fortify, now used by United States immigration agents in towns and cities across the US, is not designed to reliably identify people in the streets and was deployed without the scrutiny that has historically governed the rollout of technologies that impact people's privacy, according to records reviewed by WIRED. The Department of Homeland Security launched Mobile Fortify in the spring of 2025 to "determine or verify" the identities of individuals stopped or detained by DHS officers during federal operations, records show."
"Despite DHS repeatedly framing Mobile Fortify as a tool for identifying people through facial recognition, however, the app does not actually "verify" the identities of people stopped by federal immigration agents-a well-known limitation of the technology and a function of how Mobile Fortify is designed and used. "Every manufacturer of this technology, every police department with a policy makes very clear that face recognition technology is not capable of"
Mobile Fortify is a face-recognition app deployed by DHS in spring 2025 to determine or verify identities of people stopped or detained during federal operations. ICE has used the app over 100,000 times, including on citizens and immigrants. The app was presented as a tool for identification even though facial-recognition systems cannot provide definitive verification and are intended to generate leads. DHS linked the rollout to an executive order targeting undocumented immigration. The app’s approval proceeded after department-wide privacy reviews and limits on facial-recognition use were dismantled, enabling a faster, less scrutinized deployment.
Read at WIRED
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]