Cameron County Sheriff | Clearview AI facial recognition

Facial recognition reached Cameron County as a line of small print.

On 21 November 2023 the Commissioners’ Court’s posted notice carried, as consent item DDD, the purchase of five licenses from Clearview AI for facial recognition software, for $10,325.01, through a reseller on the Omnia Partners IT Solutions cooperative contract. The item is three lines long. It gives the vendor, the count, the price and the contract number, and nothing else. On the same page are a vending machine services award, a front-end loader and eleven body armor vests.

Clearview AI’s product matches a photograph against a database the company built by taking images from the public internet. Nothing in the county’s item says that, and nothing in the county’s record says what the Sheriff’s Office does with it: who may run a search, on what basis, whether the search is recorded, or how long anything is kept. Across 488 meeting notices from 2015 to 2026 this county has never posted a facial recognition policy.

Bought without a bid

The purchase ran through an existing cooperative contract, which is lawful in Texas and ordinary. It is also the reason nobody outside the courthouse had a chance to read a description of the software before it was bought: a cooperative purchase skips the bid notice, and the bid notice is where a public description would have appeared.

What happened to it is not public

Cameron County posts its agendas and does not publish its minutes. The item above was inside the consent block, the group of items heard collectively in one motion unless a member of the public presents opposition. So the public record shows that the Sheriff’s Office asked to buy five Clearview AI licenses, and stops. Whether the Court approved it, whether anyone pulled it out of the block to ask a question, and whether the licenses are still active are all questions for the County Clerk.