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[quote=Anonymous]This is long. . . reddit had link to Bloomberg article which was paywalled, so someone else pasted the content.

TL/DR: Target payments director with Global Entry/TSA-PreCheck since 2014 found out it was canceled 3 days after a DHS agent used facial recognition to identify her. He threatened arrest because she had been following him. She has submitted a court declaration.

A payments director at the Minneapolis-based retail giant Target Corp. said her fast-track credentials for airport security were revoked following an interaction with a federal border patrol agent who claimed he had facial recognition and was recording with a “body cam.” Nicole Cleland, a 56-year-old from suburban Minneapolis, said in a court declaration that she was participating with a neighborhood group on Jan. 10 that tracked federal agents with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, two agencies under the Department of Homeland Security that are carrying out President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

That morning, Cleland said she followed an agent’s white Dodge Ram into the parking lot of a Mexican supermarket. She described the agent, dressed in camouflage, as a “border patrol agent.”

“The agent addressed me by my name and informed me that they had ‘facial recognition’ and that his body cam was recording,” Cleland said, adding that the agent said she was impeding the law enforcement officers’ work. “He indicated he was giving me a verbal warning and if I was found to be impeding again, I would be arrested,” she said. Her declaration is included in a lawsuit filed in Minnesota state court in December by residents alleging DHS and some of its top officials and agents violated their First Amendment rights.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to requests for comment. Cleland couldn’t be reached for comment. Target declined to comment on the matter.

Bloomberg News wasn’t able to verify if facial recognition was used to identify Cleland. The Boston Globe previously reported Cleland’s declaration.

The immigration crackdown in Minneapolis is facing a growing backlash after a protester, Alex Pretti, was killed last weekend, the second US citizen to be fatally shot by federal forces in the city this month.

Among the concerns raised by civil rights groups is the growing use of facial recognition and other technologies by federal agents. “We are seeing a crackdown on observers,” said Mario Trujillo, an attorney at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. According to Trujillo, federal immigration agents only have the authority to collect people’s biometric information during entry or exit at the border, when a person has been detained or arrested or when an undocumented immigrant is in the country but working on an immigration application.

Trujillo said he is aware of several instances in which DHS is taking measures to track US citizens and monitor their work. Those include pressuring technology giants Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to remove apps that track ICE agents, and making requests of Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., to unmask accounts that have posted online about immigration raids, he said.

In addition, DHS has amassed a stockpile of artificial intelligence-based surveillance tools, according to agency records, which includes a database of AI-enabled tools it’s using. For instance, there are 24 different tools that use facial recognition, developed by vendors or in-house.

Border patrol agents are using a tool from Clearview AI Inc. to generate “visually similar photos of individuals,” “which serve as preliminary leads for analysts to initiate further investigation.”

“The intended purpose of this facial recognition technology is to assist USBP agents in addressing the challenges of identifying individuals who may be linked to national security threats or transnational criminal organizations,” according to DHS records.

Another vendor, Penlink, states on its website that it helps law enforcement pinpoint targets’ positions with “extreme accuracy” by using location information from Google, Snapchat and Facebook and combining that with data from cellular towers. Custom and Border Protection are also using NexusXplore, a tool to “solve the problem of efficiently identifying potential threats and admissibility concerns by quickly analyzing vast amounts of open-source and social media data for security risks to enhance US national security,” according to DHS. The tool was trained on data “collected from several publicly available, social media and media outlet sites,” according to the records.

It’s not clear what technology was used by the agent who interacted with Cleland.

A representative for Clearview AI said its focus with DHS is supporting Homeland Security Investigations, the department’s investigative arm, and its child exploitation and cyber crimes probes. Penlink and NexusXplore didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Among the protesters in Minnesota, Cleland’s volunteer group provides tips to other local organizations about unmarked cars belonging to federal agents, and sometimes follows their vehicles, according to her declaration. Similar groups have popped up in other US cities, with locals sending out distress calls or blowing whistles or horns when federal agents appear in their neighborhood. Others have followed agents and recorded their actions on their phones.

Three days after Cleland’s encounter with the agent, she said she received a notice that her Global Entry/TSA-PreCheck privilege had been canceled. She had been a member of the Global Entry program since 2014, she said. The program is run by Customs and Border Protection and, for a fee, gives trusted flyers expedited security processing at the airport following an interview. The notice gave no reason for the revocation. According to Global Entry policies, a traveler’s status might change if they have violated “any customs, immigration, or agriculture regulations, procedures, or laws in any country.”

“I am not particularly concerned with the revocation of my privileges in isolation,” Cleland’s declaration stated. “However, given that only three days had passed from the time that I was stopped, I am concerned that the revocation was the result of me following and observing the agents.”

Cleland said she felt angry and intimidated by the interaction with the agents and that she was exercising her rights to legally observe the federal agents’ operations in public. She said she hasn’t volunteered for the group since but continues peaceful protests.[/quote]

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