Sen. Marsha Blackburn sent a follow-up letter to Giorgi Gobronidze, CEO of PimEyes, after its technology exposed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ information.
The facial recognition company failed to address the senator’s concerns that its artificial intelligence technology was being used to identify agents.
The Tennessee Republican introduced the Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxing Act in June, legislation that would make it a crime to publicly release the name of a federal law enforcement officer with the intent to obstruct a criminal or immigration investigation.
She noted that assaults on ICE officers have surged 830% since President Donald Trump returned to office and that death threats have increased 8,000%, heightening the need for stronger protections.
Blackburn criticized PimEyes for what she described as its failure to acknowledge its role in endangering ICE agents.
In her follow-up, Blackburn said the company’s reliance on regulatory compliance is inadequate and that its claims of ethical responsibility “place too much emphasis on legal standards and too little on moral duty.”
She argued that current data protection laws do not fully safeguard individuals from harm and dismissed PimEyes’ assertion that it helps people reclaim their identities, saying the platform “compromises them instead.”
Blackburn called on the company to take greater accountability beyond mere compliance.
In her initial letter, Blackburn cited a Politico report that detailed how Dutch activist Dominick Skinner allegedly used PimEyes’ facial search engine to compile an “ICE List” of at least 20 agents.
He matched photos and revealing their identities, even when only part of their faces was visible. While the list did not include home addresses, Blackburn warned that sharing agents’ names alone could enable malicious actors to locate personal information online.
The Tennessee senator rebuked PimEyes for what she called hiding “behind technicalities” to avoid accountability for its role in endangering law enforcement officers.
She argued that the company’s distinction between “biometric identifiers” and “photographic analysis” is meaningless, noting that facial images inherently serve as identity markers regardless of how they are processed.
Blackburn emphasized that PimEyes’ claim of not generating names does not absolve it of responsibility, since users can easily connect faces to personal information online.
She said that image-based searches can reveal identities just as name searches can reveal faces, making platforms like PimEyes “vital links in the chain of potential harm.”
Blackburn said that the company cannot claim innocence simply because it does not directly assign names to images, since its technology is explicitly used for identification purposes.
The senator’s letter underscores growing bipartisan concern in Washington over the potential misuse of AI and facial recognition technologies in ways that threaten personal safety and national security.
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