Meta Collaborates with a Pentagon Contractor to Develop Face Recognition Technology for Its Glasses

Meta is currently evaluating facial recognition technology developed by a firm that provides surveillance solutions to law enforcement agencies and the U.S. military, as it considers integrating this capability into its smart glasses, according to WIRED.

This collaboration is detailed in a software license, acquired by WIRED, issued by Rank One Computing—a Denver-based company that generates about 80 percent of its revenue from governmental clients—and relates to a testing phase of the Meta AI app that powers Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses.

The U.S. Marshals Service has procured Rank One’s facial recognition technology, using it to verify the identities of detainees without requiring fingerprinting during transport, while the Naval Criminal Investigative Service—the Navy’s law enforcement entity—has utilized the company’s video tool, ROC Watch. Rank One also developed long-range facial recognition for U.S. Special Operations Command through a governmental research contract, claiming its software can recognize a face from up to a kilometer away. Various police departments nationwide employ its algorithms, integrated into products from other suppliers.

This license marks the first confirmed evidence of a commercial partnership between Meta and Rank One, providing insights into the technology Meta is assessing for a mainstream consumer device. It also highlights the increasingly blurred distinction between surveillance technologies marketed to law enforcement and military entities and those available to general consumers.

More often, the same firms and core algorithms cater to both markets.

The license acquired by Meta permits the use of Rank One’s facial recognition and its liveness detection feature, which confirms whether a camera is capturing a real person instead of a photo or mask. It can handle up to 10 million facial templates and remains operational. Code reviewed by WIRED indicates that elements of Rank One’s integration—the procedures for loading its license and initializing its software—were found in a recent version of Meta’s app, which was released this month to millions of users alongside Meta’s own facial recognition system, but those elements were inactive.

None of the facial recognition capabilities associated with Meta’s smart glasses have ever been activated for users. Meta completely removed them from the app on June 5, just one day after WIRED disclosed that the company had quietly embedded an unreleased facial recognition system, internally referred to as NameTag, in the Meta AI app—the companion application for its smart glasses, which has been downloaded on over 50 million phones. This system was inactive and inaccessible to users.

Meta offered minimal information regarding the partnership, opting not to respond to WIRED’s inquiries about its connection with Rank One. The company did not clarify the reasons for licensing the software, when the relationship initiated, or if it continues.

Rank One chose not to comment for this article.

Founded in 2015, Rank One Computing was established by a team of engineers who had developed facial recognition systems at the nonprofit research organization Noblis—efforts that included evaluating algorithms for a U.S. intelligence research agency. The company went public on Nasdaq in February.

Rank One’s leadership comprises former high-ranking officials from law enforcement and intelligence sectors. Its CEO, B. Scott Swann, previously led the FBI division managing the bureau’s biometric databases. Its board features a former CIA deputy director for science and technology, a former head of the FBI’s science and technology division, and a past Pentagon official who established a multibillion-dollar special-capabilities office.