Canadian border agency launching immigration app with facial recognition, AWS tech

Canadian border authorities will launch an app this fall that will help them track people who have been ordered to leave the country. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) will rely on facial biometrics to confirm the person’s identity and use the app to record their location.

The app, named ReportIn, was created to “allow foreign nationals and permanent residents subject to immigration enforcement conditions to report without coming in person to a CBSA office,” the agency’s spokesperson told The Canadian Press.

The solution has been in the works since 2021. According to the algorithmic impact assessment for the project, the voice biometric technology that the CBSA has used was being phased out due to failures and replaced by the ReportIn app.

In April, the CBSA published a tender for a smartphone-based face biometrics solution to verify the identity of travelers crossing its borders. The contract was worth anywhere from CA$5 million (US$3.6 million) to CA$25 million ($18.2 million).

Although the app will be voluntary, questions are being raised about its algorithms, user consent model and the danger of bias.

The CBSA wants to keep the face biometrics algorithm used a trade secret. Brenda McPhail, the director of executive education in McMaster University’s public policy in digital society program (currently on leave from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association), notes that this may leave people without the right to understand how decisions are made.

The app will rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS), prompting questions on whether Amazon Rekognition will be used in the app.

McPhail notes that Amazon has never voluntarily submitted its algorithm for testing to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), but as a cloud service, it is not eligible for FRTE testing. A spokesperson for AWS responded that Amazon Rekognition is tested by third parties, including Credo AI, an AI governance, risk, and compliance company. CBSA added that Credo AI has tested the software for bias and found a 99.9 percent facial match rate across six different demographic groups. The app “will be continuously tested after launch to assess accuracy and performance” while final decisions will be made by humans, the agency notes.

Amazon Rekognition has also been tested by NIST-accredited iBeta, the spokesperson notes. Rekognition Face Liveness was confirmed compliant to the ISO/IEC biometric presentation attack detection (PAD) standard level 1 last September. Level 2 confirmation followed in October.

CBSA also explains that individuals will not be tracked constantly. Instead, their location will be collected each time they report and when an individual fails to comply with their conditions. The feature will allow the agency to monitor people for early signs of non-compliance, according to the documents on the project obtained by the media outlet.

Around 2,000 people a year who are ordered to leave the country fail to show up forcing the Canadian government to spend considerable resources locating them.