The Georgetown Law researchers who provided documents covering the years 2015 to 2017 to The Post discovered that ICE had submitted queries in Utah, Vermont and Washington. They related not only to petty theft and other low-level crimes but also to overstayed visas and information falsification, which is common among undocumented people trying to avoid detection. ICE’s demands often came not in the form of court orders but in administrative subpoenas requiring no proof of probable cause. Some were simple paper requests.

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Congress has never authorized recognition searches on databases full of innocent people’s faces, and neither have the state legislatures involved. In fact, Vermont officials say they stopped complying with ICE requests two years ago, after complaints that facial recognition violated a state law banning the use of biometric identification technology for license databases — which means the searches might have been illegal while they did occur. In Washington, too, the law has barred facial-recognition searches without a court order since 2012, but the state answered to administrative subpoenas until 2018. The Department of Licensing says it believes it has been in compliance with the statute.

ICE’s strategy punishes immigrants for complying with the law and securing licenses to drive from place to place, and it will likely scare off others from doing it. It might also scare off loved ones who are here legally but who worry that appearing in a database could put their undocumented family members in danger. Facial recognition’s poor performance among people of color, coupled with too-low accuracy thresholds, can make matters worse.

Advocates have long warned of the dangers of facial recognition left unregulated, but the most potent threats the technology could pose to civil rights are usually expressed as hypotheticals. This week’s revelations turn those hypotheticals into reality. Congress must pass a law limiting the use of this powerful tool to when it is warranted and necessary. In the meantime, federal agencies must stop using it when it is not.

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