Washington County Facial Recognition
| Tracking # |
S000104-020919 |
| Submitted | Feb. 5, 2019 |
| Est. Completion | None |
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Communications
From: Aarian Marshall
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Oregon Public Records Law, I hereby request the following records:
WIRED magazine seeks records relating to the Washington County Sheriff's ("Sheriff's Office") use of facial recognition technology marketed by Amazon and its subsidiary AWS (collectively, "Amazon") under the name "Rekognition." The Sheriff's Office has acknowledged that it uses Rekognition to power its facial recognition program in media statements, and documentation on the program and use of Rekognition were made public by the ACLU in May 2018. The Sheriff's Office's use of facial recognition is also described in WCSO Policy 808.
WIRED requests all records related to Rekognition created on or after May 1, 2018, including but not limited to:
1. Communications between any representative of the Sherriff's Office and any representative of Amazon.
2. Materials that describe how Rekognition functions, including e-mails, handouts, PowerPoint presentations, advertisements, or specification documents.
3. Policies, procedures, or manuals governing the use of Rekognition or any related applications, or the use, sharing or access to any related data.
4. Training materials governing the use of Rekognition or any related service or application by employees of the Sheriff's Office.
6. Records referencing the mobile application for facial recognition built on Rekognition service, as discussed in WCSO Policy 808.
7. Records of any discussion regarding the Rekognition service or related applications, including meeting agendas or minutes, analyses, or communications between the Sheriff's Office and elected leaders or county officials.
8. Records describing or summarizing the Sheriff's Office's facial recognition database, previously stated by Amazon to contain 30,000 mugshots, including counts of photos or individuals, demographic information, and other particulars.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is being made for newsgathering purposes.
There is a strong public interest in law enforcement use of technology, and this request is being made by a news organization, WIRED, with a twenty-five year track record of covering new technologies and their effects on society. As such, WIRED requests that any fees assessed are waived. 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 10 business days.
Sincerely,
Tom Simonite
From: Washington County Sheriff's Office
Tom Simonite,
We received your request and attempted to acknowledge your request through our online public records request portal, the Washington County Public Records Center. However, we received a message that the email was undeliverable. I wanted to ensure you received our acknowledgement to your request, so it is also attached to this email.
Thanks!
Katrina West
Senior Criminal Records Specialist
Washington County Sheriff’s Office
215 SW Adams Ave, MS 32
Hillsboro, OR 97123
(503) 846-2524 | (503) 846-2719 fax
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From: Washington County Sheriff's Office
Mr. Simonite,
Thank you for your inquiry. This request, dated February 7, appears to be a duplicate of another request dated February 5. We are closing this request and will respond via the original one.
Best,
Deputy Jeff Talbot
Public Information Officer
Washington County Sheriff's Office
*Emails are not monitored 24/7. To reach the on-duty PIO, call (503) 209-5613.
From: Washington County Sheriff's Office
Mr. Simonite,
Thank you for your inquiry. Below are the responses to the information you've requested. Please reach out to us should you choose to proceed with items #1 and/or #7.
1. Communications between any representative of the Sherriff's Office and any representative of Amazon.
Items #1 and #6 will require searching of our email archives, followed by review for redaction of protected and NDA information. The total cost estimate to provide you with these items is $455 (1 hr County Counsel @ $205/hr, 5 hour Law Enforcement Technology workgroup at $50/hr). If the estimated time ends up being less, you would be reimbursed the difference.
2. Materials that describe how Rekognition functions, including e-mails, handouts, PowerPoint presentations, advertisements, or specification documents.
AWS has the following publically available documentation:
* https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/resources/
* https://docs.aws.amazon.com/rekognition/latest/dg/what-is.html
* https://docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-sdk-php/v3/api/api-rekognition-2016-06-27.html
3. Policies, procedures, or manuals governing the use of Rekognition or any related applications, or the use, sharing or access to any related data.
Our policy is available here<https://www.co.washington.or.us/Sheriff/Policies/800/upload/808-R03-FINAL-Using-Facial-Recognition-Systems-01-04-19.pdf>. Additional information can be found here.
4. Training materials governing the use of Rekognition or any related service or application by employees of the Sheriff's Office
A PDF version of our PowerPoint training presentation has been uploaded here<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rgrRLOvBz314AXriAhXaSwnVedxZjgcN/view?usp=sharing> for you to access.
5. Note: no item #5 was listed in the original request.
6. Records referencing the mobile application for facial recognition built on Rekognition service, as discussed in WCSO Policy 808.
Per our phone conversation, you are no longer requesting this information. That being said, we have written initial code for a mobile app but it is still in development and not been deployed to any users.
7. Records of any discussion regarding the Rekognition service or related applications, including meeting agendas or minutes, analyses, or communications between the Sheriff's Office and elected leaders or county officials.
See response to item #1.
8. Records describing or summarizing the Sheriff's Office's facial recognition database, previously stated by Amazon to contain 30,000 mugshots, including counts of photos or individuals, demographic information, and other particulars.
Per our phone conversation, you are no longer requesting this information. That being said, our collection contains approximately 320,000 booking photos and does not contain any accompanying demographics or other particulars other than the facial features data of booking photos.
Best,
Deputy Jeff Talbot
Public Information Officer
Washington County Sheriff's Office
*Emails are not monitored 24/7. To reach the on-duty PIO, call (503) 209-5613.
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