A Japanese IT company that provides US immigration authorities with biometric technologies used to target immigrant communities.
NEC Corporation is an information technology (IT) company, headquartered in Tokyo, that specializes in artificial intelligence–powered automated detection and surveillance systems. Its “Safer Cities” surveillance suite creates massive databases that integrate biometrics with national IDs, citywide video feeds, drone surveillance feeds, and crowd behavior analysis to “predict crime.”
NEC is one of three main suppliers of biometric technologies in the U.S., alongside IDEMIA and Thales subsidiary Gemalto. It has provided face and iris matching algorithms for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) main biometric database, Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT), which was replaced by a larger and more advanced database called Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART).
Designed by Peraton, HART collects and analyzes facial images, DNA profiles, iris scans, digital fingerprints, and voice prints. It sources this information from, and shares it with, other federal agencies, local law enforcement, and certain foreign governments. DHS has acknowledged that there is "a risk that HART facial image matching results may be inaccurate or result in a disproportionate impact to certain populations" having to do with, for example, “gender, race and age.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents collect biometric information in the field during their raids and other enforcement operations using NEC's NeoScan fingerprint device. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uses the company’s facial recognition technology, NeoFace, for its Biometric Entry/Exit program, which collects biographic and biometric data from people crossing the border at airports and other ports of entry. A $23.9 million contract held between NEC and the DHS from 2020 to 2023 states that DHS was using NEC biometric matching products for “unlimited facial quantities, on unlimited hardware platforms, and at unlimited locations.”
From 2005 to June 2021, DHS awarded NEC Corporation eight contracts worth just over $18.4 million. These contracts included maintaining DHS’s existing NEC biometrics equipment and acquiring NEC’s SmartScan face and fingerprint recognition technology.
US Policing
NEC supplies its automated fingerprint identification systems and biometric to U.S. police agencies. In 2018, the company claimed that it provided such systems to “more than 30% of police forces in the United States.”
The company’s facial recognition technology was used by police—as the underlying algorithm for facial recognition provided by contractor DataWorks Plus—in three cases involving Black men being wrongfully accused of crimes they did not commit in Detroit and New Jersey. Studies have shown facial recognition to contain inherent racial and gender biases.