TL;DR

US Customs and Border Protection is spending $225,000 for a year of access to Clearview AI’s face recognition technology. The contract extends the tool to intelligence and targeting units for day-to-day operations, raising concerns about the scale and oversight of biometric surveillance.

Embedded intelligence tool

The deal gives Clearview AI access to Border Patrol’s headquarters intelligence division and the National Targeting Center — units that collect and analyse data to “disrupt, degrade, and dismantle” security threats.

The contract states Clearview provides access to “over 60+ billion publicly available images” and will be used for “tactical targeting” and “strategic counter-network analysis.” This language indicates the service will be embedded in analysts’ routine intelligence work rather than reserved for isolated investigations.

The agreement does not specify what kinds of photos agents will upload, whether searches may include US citizens, or how long uploaded images or search results will be retained.

Accuracy concerns

Recent testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that face-search systems perform well on high-quality photos but struggle in less controlled settings. Images captured at border crossings produced error rates “much higher, often in excess of 20 percent, even with the more accurate algorithms.”

NIST also found a fundamental trade-off: reducing false matches increases the risk of missing correct matches. When systems are configured to always return candidates, searches for people not in the database will still generate “matches” — and those results will always be wrong.

Looking forward

Senator Ed Markey has introduced legislation to bar ICE and CBP from using face recognition altogether. As biometric tools become routine infrastructure rather than targeted investigative aids, the question of whether safeguards have kept pace with deployment is becoming more pressing.