Why Is the Government Collecting Your Biometric Data?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/155939/why_is_the_government_collecting_your_biometric_data/

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The next time you get pulled over, watch for a blocky, black gadget attached to the officer's iPhone. That's the MORIS device, one of many mobile fingerprint and biometric scanners proliferating in police departments around the country. MORIS is designed to ascertain identity and dig up an unsavory past, but that's not all: the device can also gather iris scans, fingerprints, and photos searchable with face recognition technology.

Mobile scanners like MORIS are just one of the many ways biometric data (unique, identifying physical features including fingerprints, DNA or iris scans) is collected and potentially fed into government and private biometric databases that have swelled in both size and sophistication in the decade after 9/11.

The Department of Justice is expanding its fingerprint database to include iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, scars, tattoos, and measures of voice and gait. The DoD collects iris scans, prints and face recognition photos from anyone coming in and out of Afghanistan; Department of Homeland Security gathers face recognition photos and fingerprints from people entering the U.S. Even motor vehicle departments in many states use face recognition technology to ID people when they get their licenses, and they tend to be cooperative with criminal investigations. The big agencies are also increasingly making their databases interoperable, so an immigrant's print that lands in the DHS database (IDENT) can be accessed by the FBI. Information is also shared with foreign governments and private companies.

[Brickbat]

1. I bet those cops have got SCMODS.

[Turbineguy]

2. LOL

[Jackpine Radical]

3. This is the kind of shit

that we used to scare the crap out of ourselves with back in the '50's with all those dystopian SF novels.

Worldwide, democracy is a fraud. Wisconsin just got one giving me an up-close and personal lesson about all that.

Only the little (and relatively energy-independent) countries of Scandinavia (including Iceland, with its free hot-water heating) seem to be resisting the trend. Even Canada, our brave and generally sensible role-model to the north, is succombing.

[kenny blankenship]

4. If they want to scan everyone's colon they must have a pretty good reason

The Government wouldn't want rectal scans of everyone unless they really need to have them. It must be for our protection.

This will only bother those who are up to no good.

[On_the_edge]

5. Spam deleted by OKNancy (MIR Team)

[Ian David]

6. I used to have dudes in the AOL chat rooms constantly wanting my biometric data.

Especially if I was "cut" or "uncut."

I suppose the government wants that information for the same reason.

[flamingdem]

7. My fingerprints were taken entering the US a few years ago

I didn't like it but they have the machines right there where you show documents and speak to the officer.

[KG]

8. oh, c'mon. sensible woodchucks know if you ain't done wrong ya got nothing to worry about...

[treestar]

9. Probably just to solve crimes in the future

And the defense lawyers can try objecting to the evidence on grounds of the way it was collected. Was there similar objection to the collection of old fashioned (now) data like fingerprints?