The Chicago Police Department (CPD) uses face recognition, but limits public information on how it is used. CPD has no public policy governing law enforcement use of face recognition. As of August 2016, phone calls to follow up on public records requests were directed to a full voicemail account that provides no further contact information. CPD can run face recognition searches against a mug shot database (008686). It’s unclear if police are required to have reasonable suspicion to run a search, and if the CPD “scrubs” its mug shot database to eliminate people who were never charged, had charges dropped or dismissed, or were ultimately found innocent. According to a 2016 report by the Government Accountability Office, the FBI can request face recognition searches of 43 million Illinois driver’s license and ID photos (GAO). It’s unclear whether CPD can run searches against these photos.
In 2012, CPD requested $2 million to support real-time video-based face recognition (008725). They also bought an exceptionally large amount of network hardware and spent $450,000 on enterprise-class database and computing infrastructure (008671–008685). It’s unclear if they currently run face recognition searches against real-time or archival video.
CPD uses a DataWorks Plus face recognition system, but it is unclear which algorithm that system uses.
Sources and Notes: CPD, GAO (Last updated: September 2016). You can review our scorecard criteria in the Methodology section. Numerical citations, e.g. (123456), refer to official records available by clicking "View Documents" below.