US Secret Service

Privacy Impact Assessment DHS/USSS/PIA-033, dated 12 September 2024, says Secret Service investigators use facial recognition to "develop investigative leads" on suspected criminals involved in counterfeiting, financial crimes and cyber-enabled crimes. Investigators submit photographs or video stills of unknown people as probe images for one-to-many searches or one-to-one comparisons, and trained examiners review candidates. The databases named are DHS IDENT/HART (searched through the Office of Biometric Identity Management), the State Department Consolidated Consular Database, the FBI Next Generation Identification Interstate Photo System, the Defense Department's Automated Biometric Identity System and state and local mugshot galleries. The PIA states that the Secret Service "does not use commercially provided facial recognition services", does not use facial recognition to surveil the public and will not procure devices that analyse live video in real time; candidate lists need corroboration and are not to be the sole basis for any law enforcement action. GAO (September 2023) had recorded Clearview AI use by the Secret Service during its review period and a halt as of April 2023. The DHS 2025 AI Use Case Inventory (entry DHS-415, "Criminal Investigations (OBIM)", as consolidated by the Office of Management and Budget) lists this use as deployed and high-impact, with an operational date of January 2017; it says probe images are searched through DHS's IDENT system using an NEC algorithm trained on mugshot data and paid volunteers, which is not further trained on production data, and records an impact assessment, a Chief AI Officer review, monitoring, training and an appeal process as in place. Nextgov (15 October 2026) reported Secret Service chief information officer and chief AI officer Chris Kraft describing the facial recognition model as deployed. Neither the PIA nor the inventory shows whether use has been continuous since 2017, so the start date is left open.