Attorneys General from the US and Mexico are poised to unveil a new facial recognition system designed to track victims of human trafficking this week.

According to a Hypopotamus report, the system will allow families to upload photos of missing persons, and will then use these photos to identify individuals caught on surveillance feeds. The system could thus help authorities to track down some of the millions of individuals who fall victim to human trafficking every year.

The technology was developed by Atlanta-based Trust Stamp, whose facial recognition technology is designed to turn selfie images into encrypted data that would be meaningless to hackers. That allows the data to be shared more easily between law enforcement agencies and other stakeholder institutions, since it will not violate the subjects’ privacy rights.

Trust Stamp’s technology was originally developed for commercial applications, with the startup having offered a version of its face verification technology in an app designed to build trust in Facebook’s online Marketplace. The technology has also been deployed in the financial services sector, with banks using it for customer retention and to fight fraud. But it could soon make its biggest impact yet, if it proves to be a useful tool in the fight against human trafficking.

Source: Hypepotamus

(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)