FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping

FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping

www.cnn.com

The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people's physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.


The FBI wants to use eye scans, combined with other data, to help identify suspects.

1 of 3 But it's an issue that raises major privacy concerns -- what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans.

The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information -- from palm prints to eye scans.

Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is "important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in."

But it's unnerving to privacy experts.

"It's the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project.

(visit the link for the full news article)

well it looks like we are moving forward in losing any sort of privacy that we have. To me this is a step in the wrong direction and I have issues with it. What do you all think?

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by Jeff Riff


We keep moving faster and faster towards 1984. This could take years to get our civil liberties back.

Originally posted by Jeff Riff


well it looks like we are moving forward in losing any sort of privacy that we have. To me this is a step in the wrong direction and I have issues with it. What do you all think?

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Oh gee... the FBI can't even pay their phone bills for the wire taps they do. So how are they gonna pull this off?

[edit on 2/4/2008 by Leyla]

reply to post by geologist


or we could start civil war 2?

Only this time instead of fighting north v. south, it'll be us against the corrupt govt.

i know i can definately be id'd by my ink....i got arrested one time and the police took all kinds of pics of my ink...

The cost of security is always liberty.

Would any of these new measures actually protect us from terror? A criminal is not a criminal until he commits a crime against the state. All the database results in the world won't stop the crime's commission, because the one thing the database cannot do is predict your future behavior.

I guess it can predict trends, but that's not the same thing.

And who's watching the watchers? That's what I want to know. Who gets to tell Big Brother that enough is enough? Because pretty soon the mere act of protesting a security measure may get you branded as a threat.

The government may soon drive free thinkers underground.

Originally posted by Leyla

Oh gee... the FBI can't even pay their phone bills for the wire taps they do. So how are they gonna pull this off?

They most likely have a new way to wire tap and they don't have to rely on the previous system, perhaps they have private companies set up to handle what the phone companies used to do. I am sure they have a back up plan for their spying on thier own taxpaying citizens in the works before they stopped paying for the service somewhere else.

this is being discussed on a few other threads already:

here
here
here
and here

interesting, I grew up near Clarksburg. One of the things discussed was the gossip that the FBI center was 15 stories high. 3 above ground and 12 below. I had a couple of friends that took temp jobs there doing data entry, entering info about names, and finger prints. I think some of the database info is already there, I think what there doing is just upgrading it, and adding more.

It really comes down to if you trust the government, and if you are going to do something that would be against there best interest. I for one don't plan to as I have young kids, others though, well thats a different story. I just hope its actually for the people's interest and not for a police state.

Other points of interest, besides the FBI, Nasa, Northrup Grumman, and several other initials have offices off the same exit on I-79.

Cheers,

Camain

reply to post by Boondock78

Ink? [ohhh tattoo... shows how many I have. ]

I'm not that worried... yet.

They still have to obtain your palm print, eye scan, or tattoo map in the first place. Likely just at the time of arrest like everything else. Some jurisdictions already take DNA even for misdemeanors.

For everyone else consent would have to be obtained one way or another.

The immediate problem will be false positives. Biometrics at present are pretty unreliable especially for large groups. Fingerprints alone won't hold up in court if there's no other evidence tying a suspect to a crime. It will take some time for them to work out the kinks and come up with something resembling a reliable system.



[edit on 4-2-2008 by apc]

Originally posted by AJ Lavender
The cost of security is always liberty.

Would any of these new measures actually protect us from terror? A criminal is not a criminal until he commits a crime against the state. All the database results in the world won't stop the crime's commission, because the one thing the database cannot do is predict your future behavior.

I guess it can predict trends, but that's not the same thing.

And who's watching the watchers? That's what I want to know. Who gets to tell Big Brother that enough is enough? Because pretty soon the mere act of protesting a security measure may get you branded as a threat.

The government may soon drive free thinkers underground.

"Quis Custodies, ipsos custodes" Who guards the guardians, love that quote.

As for whether it will prevent crime... no, it NEVER WILL. I know people supporting this nonsense notion would love to think so. But it simply cannot happen. We are dealing with the human mind here and the human mind is an incredibly complex system to study. No matter how many years you study it in psychology, there will always be something that will come along and completely render your studies useless. Why? because we keep "upgrading" so to speak, our mind/behavior. We are unpredictible and no matter how many trends they may study, there's a good chance you'll get your prediction wrong at most 50% of the time.

If you watch Spielberg's "Minority Report" you'll see what I'm talking about. What I don't like about this sort of system, is that the FBI has technically already labeled each and everyone of us a criminal (as someone pointed out, doesn't a report occur only AFTER a person has committed a crime?) and we have to prove ourselves innocent. What I remember is, it used to be "Innocent first! until proven guilty" so since when do we live in Bizarro world?

I know some scared nelly is going to say "are you willing to take the risk?" and I say YES! dang it! I don't like the idea of losing my liberties because the government is too incompetent to do the JOBS they were elected to! (although that's a lie too considering they were not elected... not by the people) and protect our privacy, while protecting our country from terrorists and criminals. Remember this and remember this well... YOU are an american! Born in what WAS once the land of the free, you have rights and you have inalienable liberties that NO ONE, not even the government can take away from you. If you believe this, then you should know better than to want the FBI to cattle tag you a criminal without your knowing, without your permission and already making ridiculous assumptions about who YOU are based on inscrupulous studies/surveys/whatever method they use.

The truth of the matter is, considering that our CIA and our FBI has been involved in many shady practices (drug/weapon trafficking), the obvious logic here is that they (the govt. and the agency acting on its behalf) has decided to label each and every free american an enemy of the state, and we should be monitored day and night because they are too incompetent to do their jobs properly without violating our rights without OUR permission.

Sha-yeah, maybe they should start trying to identify the right residences on busts to keep them from bursting into the wrong house and killing grandmothers.

There are many ways they could get our retinals and prints without consent, ya know. Ever go to the eye doc and get a pic (ostensibly) for glaucoma?

I'd like to see them get prints and retinals of all the gubmint agency employees first. I mean they're the ones committing domestic and foreign crimes under the auspices of 'spying'.

Let's see how they like it.