DHS names first chief AI officer, vows against ‘improper’ AI surveillance

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last week announced it has appointed its first chief AI officer to “promote AI innovation and safety” within the department.

DHS Chief Information Officer Eric Hysen, who has been named to the post, will retain his positions as CIO and co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Taskforce Committee (AITF). Among his other duties, Hysen will be responsible for greenlighting the use of AI surveillance programs.

Prior to his current roles at DHS, Hysen held several jobs in which he was responsible for implementing immigration policies. In 2016 Hysen “led improvements to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to meet President Obama’s unprecedented goal to admit 85,000 refugees.” He was a key player on the Biden-Harris transition team, which came after a stint as a senior fellow at the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) where he helped shape Biden's immigration policies. This included a directive to "securely increase refugee admissions multifold."

Hysen also spent nearly three years as director of the Justice and Opportunity Initiative at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's foundation the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). There he “led the development of CZI’s immigration reform strategy.”

At the start of his career, Hysen worked for Google where he was responsible for the company's “voter participation” programs.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Thursday also announced two new policies concerning the department’s use of AI and facial recognition technology in particular. Both policies appear singularly focused on ensuring that AI programs are not biased or discriminatory.

The policies also promise that AI will not be used to “improperly” track taxpayers — at least not “solely” for exercising their constitutional rights.

“DHS will not use AI to improperly profile, target, or to discriminate against any individual, or entity, based on the individual characteristics identified above, as reprisal or solely because of exercising their Constitutional rights,” says the Acquisition and Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning by DHS Components policy. “DHS will not use AI technology to enable improper systemic, indiscriminate, or large-scale monitoring, surveillance, or tracking of individuals.”

Similarly, in the second policy titled Use of Face Recognition and Face Capture Technologies, the department vows that facial recognition (FR) or face capture (FC) programs will not be used to target people “solely” for exercising their constitutional rights. 

“DHS does not use FR or FC technologies to profile, target, or discriminate against any individual solely for exercising their Constitutional rights or to enable systemic, indiscriminate, or wide-scale monitoring, surveillance, or tracking,” reads the policy.

DHS already employs AI-powered facial recognition technology to scan billions of faces without their owners’ permission when identifying criminals.

According to Forbes, the DHS Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit matches images of alleged perpetrators against Clearview AI, a database which has scraped over 30 billion photos of private citizens from the web without permission. HSI has spent approximately $2 million to license Clearview AI, which it has reportedly used to “investigate child exploitation.”

But it is unknown for what other purposes DHS may be using Clearview AI or other such tools. And while Forbes claims that “auditors monitor appropriate use” at the agency, a Buzzfeed report in April 2021 found that employees at over 1,800 publicly funded agencies have used Clearview AI often without the knowledge or consent of their superiors. These include military branches, health organizations, local and state police, state attorneys general, federal law enforcement and even public schools.

HSI is also not the only federal law enforcement agency to conduct searches on private Americans without their consent.