Meta’s Foray into Facial Recognition: A Closer Look at the Integration with Rank One Computing
Meta tests WIRED has learned that it is facial recognition software developed by a company that sells surveillance tools to police departments and the U.S. military as it explores integrating the technology into its smart glasses.
The agreement is documented in a software license obtained by WIRED issued by Rank One Computing — a Denver-based company that generates about 80 percent of its revenue from government customers — and is tied to a trial version of the Meta AI app that powers Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses.
The Role of Rank One Computing
Rank One’s facial recognition was purchased by the US Marshals Service, which uses it to confirm the identities of prisoners without fingerprinting them during transport, and by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service – the Navy’s police force – which purchased the company’s video tool, ROC Watch. Rank One developed long-range facial recognition for the US Special Operations Command as part of a government research contract and said its software could identify a face from up to a kilometer away. Police departments across the country also use the algorithms, embedded in tools they buy from other providers.
Meta’s Technological Ambitions
The license is the first known evidence of a commercial relationship between Meta and Rank One and offers a rare glimpse into the type of technology Meta is considering when it comes to facial recognition for a mass-market consumer device. It also shows how thin the line has become between surveillance technology sold to law enforcement and the military and consumer products sold to everyone else.
Increasingly, the same companies and the same underlying algorithms serve both.
The Scope of the License
The license acquired by Meta allows use of Rank One’s facial recognition as well as liveness recognition, which checks whether a camera recognizes a real person and not a photo or a mask. It supports up to 10 million face templates and stays active. Code reviewed by WIRED shows that remnants of Rank One’s integration — the routines that load its license and initialize its software — remained in a version of the Meta app that was shipped to millions of consumers this month in a dormant state, along with the company’s proprietary facial recognition system.
None of the facial recognition systems associated with Meta’s smart glasses have ever been active for users. Meta deleted it from the app entirely on June 5, a day after WIRED revealed that the company had quietly integrated an unreleased facial recognition system internally called NameTag into the Meta AI app – the companion software for its smart glasses, which has been downloaded to more than 50 million phones. The system was inactive and users could not access it.
Meta’s Silence and Rank One’s Background
Meta said almost nothing about the agreement and declined to answer WIRED’s questions about its relationship with Rank One. Meta would not say why it licensed the software, when the relationship began or whether it is ongoing.
Rank One declined to comment for this story.
Rank One Computing was founded in 2015 by a group of engineers who had developed facial recognition systems at the nonprofit research institute Noblis – whose work included evaluating algorithms for a U.S. intelligence research agency. The company went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange in February.
Rank One’s leadership is comprised of senior law enforcement and intelligence officials. Its executive director, B. Scott Swann, previously headed the FBI division that operates the FBI’s biometric databases. The board includes a former CIA deputy director for science and technology, a former head of the FBI’s science and technology division and a former Pentagon official who built a multibillion-dollar special office.
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