ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – When an Orange County woman returned home from a shopping trip shortly before Christmas in 2021, she was unaware someone standing outside her house may have been watching her through the windows.
Later that night, while reviewing surveillance videos captured by her Ring doorbell camera, the homeowner discovered a man had walked up her driveway while she was inside, unzipped his jean shorts, and performed a sex act on himself as he peered into her home.
The unidentified man returned to the same home on Christmas Eve, according to an affidavit written by a detective with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, but he appeared to get scared away when the doorbell camera’s automated voice announced, “You are being video recorded.”
Since detectives did not recognize the man, sheriff’s officials published an internal crime bulletin with his photograph in hopes that other law enforcement officers might be able to identify him.
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At the time, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office had just begun subscribing to Clearview AI, a privately-owned facial recognition database containing more than 40 billion images collected from social media and other websites.
After uploading the suspect’s photograph to the facial recognition platform, Clearview AI provided an Orange County crime analyst with a potential lead: The man appeared to resemble online images of Bobby James Harris, a transient who lived in the area.
Detectives quickly discovered Harris is a registered sex offender who served prison time for performing a lewd act in front of a child in 1991 and has been convicted of indecent exposure on three prior occasions.
Deputies arrested Harris, who later pleaded no contest to a felony charge of exposure of sexual organs and agreed to serve a nearly three-year prison sentence, court records show.
It’s impossible to know how quickly Harris would have been brought to justice without the assistance of facial recognition, a controversial technology that a growing number of state and federal law enforcement agencies are using to help solve crimes.
“It’s a very powerful tool,” said Orange County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Jeff Eifler. “It may be an opportunity for us to very quickly generate a lead that we would not otherwise have.”
Since subscribing to Clearview AI in 2021 at a cost of $50,000 annually, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said it has performed more than 12,000 searches of the facial recognition database, including searches done for training purposes.
Those searches have resulted in more than 350 leads for detectives to pursue. The agency does not specifically track the number of arrests that have resulted from the use of facial recognition, and multiple leads may be generated during a single investigation.
“If we can get a surveillance photograph and pretty quickly come up with a lead we can move forward with, we want that all day long,” Eifler said. “It’s for the safety and the security of both the community and the public at large.”
Eifler agreed to speak with News 6 about the agency’s use of facial recognition, in part to dispel misconceptions and concerns the community may have about how the technology is used.
“(Orange County Sheriff John Mina) has always had us operate from a level of transparency with the public,” Eifler said. “We do understand that facial recognition technology is both new, and for some, it’s questionable.”
Critics of facial recognition use, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have expressed concern that the technology is prone to errors and disproportionally misidentifies people with darker skin tones.
“Facial recognition is biased against people of color and often inaccurate,” ACLU attorney Matt Cagle said in a 2019 interview with CBS News. “In the hands of police departments, (facial recognition) will fan the flames of discriminatory policing. It will result in more dangerous encounters between members of the public and the police.”
Clearview AI, the privately-owned platform used by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and many other law enforcement agencies, boasts that its algorithm has an accuracy rate exceeding 99% for all demographics.
In 2020, the ACLU sued Clearview AI in Illinois, accusing the company of violating that state’s biometric information privacy law “on an unprecedented scale”.
Clearview AI did not admit any wrongdoing, but as part of a settlement the company voluntarily agreed to permanently stop providing its facial recognition database to private entities and individuals.
Under the settlement agreement, Illinois residents can block themselves from Clearview AI’s database. Residents of other states are not eligible to participate in that opt-out program.
Some people have sued law enforcement agencies alleging they were wrongly arrested after being identified as potential suspects through facial recognition technology.
“We do recognize the privacy concerns that are out there,” Eifler said.
To address those concerns, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office has established a written policy limiting how and when agency personnel can use facial recognition technology.
The policy specifically notes that facial recognition search results are not considered positive identification of a subject and do not, on their own, establish probable cause for an arrest.
“The agency considers the results, if any, of a facial recognition search to be advisory in nature and an investigative lead only,” the sheriff’s policy states. “Any possible connection or involvement of the subject(s) to the investigation must be determined through further investigative methods.”
Those investigative methods could include showing a photo lineup to a crime victim, obtaining other evidence placing the suspect at the crime scene, or interviewing the suspect directly.
“We don’t ever want any of our investigators or any personnel to think that it would be appropriate to say, ‘We’ve entered this picture. We’ve received this result. That’s our guy. Let’s go arrest that person,” Eifler told News 6.
“We never do that. It’s strictly prohibited in our policy. There are other investigative efforts that must be made.”
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said facial recognition technology is authorized to be used only after a crime has occurred or if the agency needs to identify an incapacitated person, such as someone with dementia, who cannot identify themselves.
The agency does not use facial recognition technology to monitor live video feeds, according to Eifler.
“I think it’s important for the public to understand that this is not an active surveillance program,” he said. “This is not something where were taking pictures arbitrarily of people walking through intersections or driving through intersections.”
To demonstrate how Clearview AI works, Eifler showed News 6 a photograph of an Orange County detective wearing a surgical mask over his nose and mouth that had been previously uploaded to the facial recognition platform.
In the search results, Clearview IA provided a link to another image showing the detective’s full face that had been taken at a charity event and posted on a website belonging to a professional photographer who also attended the fundraiser.
“It doesn’t tell you who the person is,” said Eifler. “It just tells you it looks like the individual you submitted. It appears their picture matches this one. And here’s where that picture was found.”
Although Clearview AI built its database of more than 40 billion images by “scraping” photographs from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, Eifler notes that it only has access to publicly viewable images.
“If your Facebook account is marked private, there are no images from that coming into the database,” said Eifler. “They cannot get those images.”
Orange County detectives will occasionally turn to Clearview AI immediately upon obtaining a suspect’s photograph, but Eifler said facial recognition is not always the first tool used to solve a crime.
“Each investigation is handled independently,” said Eifler. “We may have a great surveillance photograph, but we may also have additional leads. We would follow up with those additional leads first.”
Eifler compared law enforcement’s use of facial recognition to DNA, genetic genealogy, drones, and other advancements in crime-fighting.
“The sheriff has never stepped away from the use of technology to make the community safer,” said Eifler. “But he wants to make sure we’re transparent with the public and to make sure that privacy is safeguarded.”
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