Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Wired)

When hackers exploited a bug in Parler to download all of the right-wing social media platform's contents last week, they were surprised to find that many of the pictures and videos contained geolocation metadata revealing exactly how many of the site's users had taken part in the invasion of the US Capitol building just days before . But the videos uploaded to Parler also contain an equally sensitive bounty of data sitting in plain sight: thousands of images of unmasked faces, many of whom participated in the Capitol riot. Now one website has done the work of cataloging and publishing every one of those faces in a single, easy-to-browse lineup.

Late last week, a website called Faces of the Riot appeared online, showing nothing but a vast grid of more than 6,000 images of faces, each one tagged only with a string of characters associated with the Parler video in which it appeared. The site's creator tells WIRED that he used simple open source machine learning and facial recognition software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos that were posted to Parler from inside and outside the Capitol building on January 6, the day when radicalized Trump supporters stormed the building in a riot that resulted in five people's deaths. The creator of Faces of the Riot says his goal is to allow anyone to easily sort through the faces pulled from those videos to identify someone they may know or recognize who took part in the mob, or even to reference the collected faces against FBI wanted posters and send a tip to law enforcement if they spot someone.

Enlarge / The seditionists who broke into the US Capitol on Wednesday were not particularly subtle and did not put any particular effort into avoiding being identified. (credit: Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images )

Law enforcement agencies trying to track down insurrectionists who participated in yesterday's events at the US Capitol have a wide array of tools at their disposal thanks to the ubiquity of cameras and social media.

Both local police and the FBI are seeking information about individuals who were "actively instigating violence" in Washington, DC, on January 6. While media organizations took thousands of photos police can use, they also have more advanced technologies at their disposal to identify participants, following what several other agencies have done in recent months.

Several police departments, such as Miami, Philadelphia, and New York City, turned to facial recognition platforms —including the highly controversial Clearview AI —during the widespread summer 2020 demonstrations against police brutality and in support of Black communities. In Philadelphia, for example, police used software to compare protest footage against Instagram photos to identify and arrest a protestor. In November, The Washington Post reported that investigators from 14 local and federal agencies in the DC area have used a powerful facial recognition system more than 12,000 times since 2019.

Enlarge / Demonstrators marching on a roadway during a protest against police brutality and the death of George Floyd, on May 31, 2020, in Miami, Florida. (credit: Joe Raedle | Getty Images )

Law enforcement in several cities, including New York and Miami, have reportedly been using controversial facial recognition software to track down and arrest individuals who allegedly participated in criminal activity during Black Lives Matter protests months after the fact.

Miami police used Clearview AI to identify and arrest a woman for allegedly throwing a rock at a police officer during a May protest, local NBC affiliate WTVJ reported this week. The agency has a policy against using facial recognition technology to surveil people exercising "constitutionally protected activities" such as protesting, according to the report.

"If someone is peacefully protesting and not committing a crime, we cannot use it against them," Miami Police Assistant Chief Armando Aguilar told NBC6. But, Aguilar added, "We have used the technology to identify violent protesters who assaulted police officers, who damaged police property, who set property on fire. We have made several arrests in those cases, and more arrests are coming in the near future."