TL;DR: The FBI issued a request for AI-powered surveillance drones with facial recognition, license plate readers, and weapon detection. The UK launched a 10-week consultation on rolling out facial recognition nationwide. And the FTC held an event on children's privacy, raising questions about AI toys collecting kids' data.
FBI Wants Drones That Can Identify Your Face From the Sky
The FBI issued a request for information seeking vendors who can build AI-powered surveillance drones. Not just any drones: these would run facial recognition, license plate readers, and weapon detection in real-time from unmanned aircraft.
According to the November 2025 RFI, the FBI wants systems that can process live video feeds and detect vehicles, vessels, people, animals, and firearms. The tech needs to run on NVIDIA Jetson Orin hardware: edge AI processors designed for autonomous machines. This isn't theoretical. The FBI wants operational systems ready for deployment.
Matthew Guariglia from the Electronic Frontier Foundation spelled out the concern: "By their very nature, these technologies are not built to spy on a specific person under criminal investigation. They are built to do indiscriminate mass surveillance of all people."
His bigger fear? "One of our biggest fears has been that police will fly a face recognition drone over a protest and have a list of everyone who attended."
This isn't hypothetical paranoia. In May 2020, the Department of Homeland Security deployed drones to record George Floyd protesters in Minneapolis, then expanded to 15+ cities. In 2021, U.S. Marshals surveilled Washington D.C. protesters with drones. Adding facial recognition to this capability changes the stakes entirely.
The FBI already maintains a facial recognition database covering half of American adults. Local cops from dozens of states can access it. Now imagine that database connected to drones circling your neighborhood.
UK Asks: Should We Scan Everyone's Face?
The UK Home Office launched a 10-week consultation on creating a legal framework for police facial recognition. Translation: they want to massively expand face scanning and need rules for it first.
The consultation runs December 4, 2025 through February 12, 2026. It covers biometrics (fingerprints, DNA, faces), "inferential technologies" that analyze behavior to detect emotions, and object recognition that identifies your clothing, vehicle, and belongings.
Crime Minister Sarah Jones called facial recognition "the biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching." The Home Office claims 72% of people are comfortable with police searching immigration records, 68% with passport databases, and 67% with driving license databases.
The reality check: Between September 2024-2025, London's Metropolitan Police made 962 arrests using live facial recognition. That sounds good until you learn they're doing over 25,000 retrospective face searches monthly on the Police National Database. The scale is staggering.
Big Brother Watch pointed out that "police have been using facial recognition technology absent a democratic or legal basis for a decade, making this consultation necessary but long overdue." They're calling for an immediate halt to police facial recognition until the consultation concludes.
The consultation proposes a single oversight body for all police biometrics, mandatory bias testing, and proportionality assessments. But the direction is clear: the UK government wants more facial recognition, not less. They're just building the legal scaffolding to make it permanent.
What to Watch
FTC Children's Privacy Push
The FTC held an event today featuring Ben Wiseman, head of the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, discussing children's privacy in 2026. This follows recent concerns about Chinese AI toys like BubblePal collecting children's conversations and transmitting data to servers in China. The FTC has been ramping up COPPA enforcement. Expect more action this year.
ICE Mobile Facial Recognition
CBP's "Mobile Identify" app is now available to deputized local law enforcement, expanding ICE's facial recognition reach beyond federal agents. Senator Ed Markey is calling for ICE to stop using it. This builds on yesterday's Minnesota AG alert about ICE digital surveillance capabilities.
Amazon Ring AI Upgrade
The EFF is warning about Amazon's "Familiar Faces" feature rolling out to Ring doorbells. It creates faceprints of people captured on your camera, stored on Amazon's servers, not yours. If your neighbor has a Ring, Amazon may have your face whether you consented or not.
The Pattern
Three stories, one theme: surveillance infrastructure keeps expanding while oversight lags behind. The FBI wants drones before Congress debates drone surveillance limits. The UK consults on facial recognition rules after a decade of unregulated use. ICE shares face-scanning tech with local cops while legislators scramble to catch up.
The technology moves fast. The debate moves slow. By the time rules arrive, the systems are already deployed.
References
- The Intercept - The FBI Wants AI Surveillance Drones With Facial Recognition (November 21, 2025)
- Biometric Update - FBI issues RFI on drones with real-time facial recognition, license plate readers
- UK Government - Legal framework for using facial recognition in law enforcement
- Big Brother Watch - UK Government's plan to "ramp up facial recognition"
- EFF - Drone as First Responder Programs: 2025 in Review