Facial Recognition - Chicago (IL)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act., I hereby request the following records:

Records and materials related to the solicitation, acquisition, and use of face recognition technology and related software and services.
This software or services may be provided by Rekognition, Face++, and FaceFirst; this request is applicable to these and any other company providing facial recognition services under consideration or contract with this agency.

Responsive materials include but are not limited to:

• Agreements: contracts (including non-disclosure agreements), licensing agreements, nondisclosure agreements
• Bid records: Requests For Proposal (or equivalent calls for bids), sole source or limited source justification and approval documentation, documentation of selection, and other materials generated in the consideration and selection of the technology in question
• Company relations and communications: records related to meetings or follow-up actions with any vendors, companies, or other private entities marketing face recognition to this agency for immigration, intelligence, law enforcement, or other use.
• Financial records: purchase orders, invoices, and other memoranda and documentation.
• Marketing records: All marketing materials - unsolicited, requested, or otherwise - acquired from vendors of face recognition technology
• Policy records: any policy directives, guidance documents, memoranda, training materials, or similar records governing the use of face recognition technology for immigration, law enforcement, or other purposes. Any memoranda of understanding between this agency and other agencies to share data, access remote systems or other forms of information sharing with external agencies.
• Training records: training material governing the use, sharing, or access to any related data related to or collected by the face recognition software/technology, including the legal standard that is required before using the technology. Documents, should they exist, about training for bias in the use of facial recognition technology.
• Use and function records: Materials that describe the function of the software considered or in use by this agency, including emails, handouts, PowerPoint presentations, advertisements, or specification documents.
• Validation and accuracy: Records, reports, audits, and other documents sufficient to describe validation, accuracy, reliability, and policy compliance of the system.

Please limit the search to records produced from January 1, 2017 – present. Please include in your search as responsive records: communications, memorandums, background papers, meeting minutes, email exchanges, or presentation materials. If your office has questions about this request, please feel free to direct them to the address associated with this request or call the MuckRock office at 617-299-1832.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Freddy Martinez

FOIA officers,

Thank you for your acknowledgement of Open the Government's FOIA request. I respectfully request your office continue the search for records pursuant the rest of the FOIA statue. In particular, the request for records under subsection (g) are very much in the public interest as they will further the public's understanding of the third largest police department's use of facial recognition technology. Again, we state that this request is being made by a news media organization (MuckRock News) alongside Open the Government. For a keyword search we request you search the following keywords "NEC", "Cognitec" ,"IDEMIA" "Gemalto", "Vigilant Solutions", "AWS Rekognition", "Microsoft FACE", "IBM Watson Visual Recognition", "Google Cloud Vision" and "Face++".

Further, we request emails, both solicited and unsolicited that your department may be in possession of. We are unsure how to narrow the narrow the request because we are unsure how to divine the *from* addresses that your department receives. As you know, these companies are privately held and are under no obligation to make their address books open to the public. Our position is that asking us to provide "from" addresses is placing the burden for search improperly on the requester. You may limit the search of "to" email addresses to those officers in the Bureau of Technical Services.

I hope that sufficiently narrows the request for your office.

Freddy Martinez
Policy Analyst
Open The Government

Hi PAC counsel,

I am requesting your office to review this denial from the Chicago Police Department. It is unclear to me why our request is being denied when I have asked for specific records about the police department's use of facial recognition technology. I have factual knowledge that the police department's FOIA office knows where these records are reasonably located. They are falsely asserting "(iii) the request is couched in categorical terms and requires an extensive search for the records responsive to it"

The Chicago Police Department has turned over a huge number of records to Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law on their use of facial recognition technology. They have further turned over records to another non-profit in Chicago who has ongoing litigation with their department at this time. Therefore, the FOIA office should know where to search for the records and is claiming that my FOIA request would require an "extensive search for the records". This is not so. They would only have to ask the other FOIA officers who have responded to previous FOIAs where they searched or ask the Bureau of Detectives, who maintains an entire Facial Recognition unit, where the records might be reasonably placed.

Here the Chicago Police Department refused the entire FOIA without a proper search for records.

Please contact Open the Government with any questions. I can be reached at 202 332 6736.

Freddy Martinez
Policy Analyst, Open the Government

Hi Josh,

You should be able to find the attached rejection letter. A true copy of it can also be found online: https://cdn.muckrock.com/foia_files/2019/07/29/P508333_Martinez_Freddy_Letter.pdf

Please let me know if there are further questions,

Freddy Martinez

Hi Joshua,

I sent the email on 7/22/2019 using a platform called "MuckRock News" which has many features, among of which is automatically following up with agencies. They also have programmed an interface to deal with FOIA portals like the one used by the Chicago Police Department. You can find the raw email headers online here https://www.muckrock.com/foi/raw_email/750370/ which verify the request was sent on 7/22/2019.

Subject: Illinois Freedom of Information Act. Request: Facial Recognition -
Chicago (IL)
From: requests@muckrock.com
To: "FOIA" <foia@chicagopolice.org>
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2019 19:21:58 -0000
Message-ID: <20190722192158.3029.11506@9bf0f5c7-46db-4286-ab4e-5588a2487386.prvt.dyno.rt.heroku.com>

I don't know when the agency received the request because I don't have access to their IT systems.

I hope that helps answer your questions but if not, I am available at 202 332 6736 to discuss further.

Thanks,
Freddy Martinez