The FBI, in collaboration with the Pentagon, spent years secretly developing and testing a facial-recognition system. Gizmodo reports.
According to documents published by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the project is named Janus — after the ancient Roman god Janus, who has two faces on either side of his head.
The research was launched in 2014. The aim of the project was to develop an advanced facial-scanning technology capable of recognizing people in public places.
The system was intended for use in street cameras, mobile drones, and wearable sensors for police officers. In some cases, the technology was expected to detect targets at distances of up to 1,000 meters.
The project was funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA). The agency wanted the system to recognize people in photographs taken from different angles.
One of the documents described an image produced by a fixed-wing drone flying over a market.
The Janus project was officially closed in 2020. However, some of its work was folded into the Horus facial-recognition search system of the Department of Defense’s Counterterrorism Support Office.
Human-rights advocates criticized the program. They say such surveillance infringes on citizens’ rights and freedoms. If implemented, the blanket coverage of cameras under the Janus program would resemble China’s surveillance systems.
“The government is opening Pandora’s box with horrific technical capabilities that could enable ubiquitous surveillance of just about anyone,” said ACLU spokesperson Nathan Freed Wessler.
He said lawmakers must guard against government misuse of the technology, “before it’s too late.”
Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said that all forms of facial recognition raise privacy concerns.
“This system will pose truly unprecedented threats,” he said.
Meg Foster, a research fellow at Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, said that the termination of the program “will be of little comfort to anyone.”
“Given the rising number of wrongful arrests tied to facial recognition, the most vulnerable among us will bear the heaviest consequences first,” the expert said.
The documents were obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the ACLU against the FBI. The most recent of them date to 2019.
The Department of Defense and the FBI did not comment on the documents.
In December 2022, U.S. Senator Rob Portman proposed tighten the rules governing the use of facial-recognition systems.