Canadian border authorities will launch an app this fall to help them track people who have been asked 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, called ReportIn, was developed to “provide foreign nationals and permanent residents subject to immigration requirements the ability to report without having to come to a CBSA office in person,” a spokesperson for the agency 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 used by the CBSA was retired due to bugs and replaced by the ReportIn app.
In April, the CBSA issued a request for proposals for a smartphone-based facial biometrics solution to verify the identities of travellers crossing its borders, with the contract valued at between 5 million Canadian dollars (US$3.6 million) and 25 million Canadian dollars (US$18.2 million).
Although use of the app is voluntary, questions are raised about its algorithms, user consent model and the risk of bias.
The CBSA wants to keep the facial biometrics algorithm used as a trade secret. Brenda McPhail, the director of leadership training in McMaster University’s Public Policy in Digital Society program (currently on leave from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association), points out that this could result in people losing the right to understand how decisions are made.
The app is based on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which raises the question of whether Amazon Rekognition is used in the app.
McPhail points out that Amazon never voluntarily submitted its algorithm to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for testing, but as a cloud service it is not eligible for FRTE testing. An AWS spokesperson responded that Amazon Rekognition is tested by third parties, including Credo AI, an AI governance, risk and compliance company. CBSA added that Credo AI 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. Last September, Rekognition Face Liveness was confirmed to comply with the ISO/IEC Level 1 standard for biometric presentation attack detection (PAD), with confirmation for Level 2 following in October.
The CBSA also explains that people are not constantly tracked. Instead, their location is recorded each time a report is made and when conditions are not met. This feature allows the agency to monitor people for early signs of non-compliance, according to documents related to the project obtained by the media outlet.
Each year, approximately 2,000 people ordered to leave the country fail to show up, forcing the Canadian government to devote significant resources to finding them.
Article topics
Amazon | biometric liveness detection | biometrics | border security | Canada | Credo AI | facial recognition | iBeta | mobile app | ReportIn
