Threat actor
DataWorks Plus
Last fetched
DataWorks Plus is a threat actor tracked in WhisperGraph's MITRE ATT&CK corpus, observed using 0 techniques.
Description
DataWorks Plus is a South Carolina-based company that provides advanced surveillance technology, equipping police with the ability to identify faces from surveillance footage in real time. One of their flagship products, FaceWatch Plus, offers "continuous screening and monitoring of live video streams," as described on the company's website. This technology was adopted by law enforcement agencies in cities like Chicago and Detroit, enabling real-time identification from live video feeds. Another one of their products, FaceCompare Plus, offers standalone morphological facial comparison, allowing agencies to compare two facial images side-by-side without a full facial recognition system. The use of DataWorks Plus' technology has raised significant concerns, particularly regarding its reliability and potential for racial bias. In Detroit, the police department's use of this facial recognition technology has been criticized for its almost exclusive application against Black people in 2020. The department's own data revealed that the technology frequently misidentifies people, with Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig admitting that the system almost never brings back a direct match and often leads to incorrect identifications. Despite these issues, DataWorks Plus does not provide specific guidance to law enforcement on how to use the software, leaving decisions largely to the discretion of individual officers. This lack of oversight, combined with the technology's unreliability, has led to wrongful arrests and raised serious concerns among human rights advocates about the broader implications for privacy and racial justice.
Techniques by tactic
No ATT&CK techniques are recorded for DataWorks Plus in WhisperGraph.
Attributed infrastructure
None published. WhisperGraph carries no ATTRIBUTED_TO edge to DataWorks Plus today — this states the absence of a published link, not that DataWorks Plus has no infrastructure.
References
- https://www.vice.com/en/article/detroit-police-chief-facial-recognition-software-misidentifies-96-of-the-time/
- https://www.wired.com/story/some-us-cities-moving-real-time-facial-surveillance/
- https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2020/06/amnesty-international-calls-for-ban-on-the-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-for-mass-surveillance/
- https://onezero.medium.com/facial-recognition-is-law-enforcements-newest-weapon-against-protestors-c7a9760e46eb
- https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2021/08/your-facebook-selfies-could-end-up-in-a-police-surveillance-database.html
- https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/04/14/1022676/robert-williams-facial-recognition-lawsuit-aclu-detroit-police/
© The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation.
Related pages
Pivot from DataWorks Plus into its techniques, tactics and any attributed infrastructure.
Queries
Resolves the slug to this actor, merging every duplicate node sharing the same name.
MATCH (a:ACTOR)
WHERE a.name =~ $pattern OR any(x IN a.aliases WHERE x =~ $pattern)
RETURN a.id AS id, a.name AS name, a.aliases AS aliases, a.description AS description,
a.references AS references, a.campaigns AS campaigns
LIMIT 25Techniques this actor uses, grouped by the tactic each one serves.
MATCH (a:ACTOR {name: $name})-[:USES_TECHNIQUE]->(t:ATTACK_PATTERN)
OPTIONAL MATCH (t)-[:USES_TACTIC]->(tac:ATTACK_PATTERN)
RETURN t.id AS techniqueId, t.name AS techniqueName, tac.id AS tacticId, tac.name AS tacticName
LIMIT 1000Infrastructure publicly attributed to this actor.
MATCH (n)-[:ATTRIBUTED_TO]->(a:ACTOR {name: $name})
RETURN labels(n)[0] AS kind, n.name AS name
LIMIT 25Or query Whisper from your own LLM workflow via the Whisper MCP server.