National Security Law Commons^™

Bulk Biometric Metadata Collection, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

Smart police body cameras and smart glasses worn by law enforcement increasingly reflect state-of-the-art surveillance technology, such as the integration of live-streaming video with facial recognition and artificial intelligence tools, including automated analytics. This Article explores how these emerging cybersurveillance technologies risk the potential for bulk biometric metadata collection. Such collection is likely to fall outside the scope of the types of bulk metadata collection protections regulated by the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015. The USA FREEDOM Act was intended to bring the practice of bulk telephony metadata collection conducted by the National Security Agency (“NSA”) under tighter regulation. In …

Biometric Cyberintelligence And The Posse Comitatus Act, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the rapid growth of what the military and the intelligence community refer to as “biometric-enabled intelligence.” This newly emerging intelligence tool is reliant upon biometric databases—for example, digitalized storage of scanned fingerprints and irises, digital photographs for facial recognition technology, and DNA. This Article introduces the term “biometric cyberintelligence” to more accurately describe the manner in which this new tool is dependent upon cybersurveillance and big data’s massintegrative systems.

This Article argues that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, designed to limit the deployment of federal military resources in the service of domestic policies, will be difficult …