FBI Effort Will Build Biggest Biometric Database
$1 billion project will expand information; critics of plan worried about impact on privacy
CLARKSBURG, W.Va. - The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.
Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here.
Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives.
And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists.
The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.
“Bigger. Faster. Better. That’s the bottom line,” said Thomas Bush, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.
The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny.
It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people’s bodies will become de facto national identification cards.
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Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd.
The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government.
For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases.
The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees, which are stored separately.
The Department of Homeland Security has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks and who want to move through lines quickly. The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs.
The Department of Homeland Security has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas and from visa applicants abroad.
“It’s going to be an essential component of tracking,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s enabling the always-on-surveillance society.”
If successful, the system planned by the FBI, called Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.
In an underground facility the size of two football fields, a request reaches an FBI server every second from somewhere in the United States or Canada, comparing a set of digital fingerprints against the FBI’s database of 55 million sets of electronic fingerprints.
A possible match is made — or ruled out — as many as 100,000 times a day.
Soon, the server at Criminal Justice Information Services headquarters will also compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe.
If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at the airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know whether the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists.
An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.
More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government, and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said.
Currently those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed. But the FBI is planning a “rap-back” service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees’ fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.
Advocates say bringing together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances of catching criminals.
The Pentagon has already matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI’s criminal fingerprint database. The FBI intends to make criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said.
There are 900,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers who can query the fingerprint database today, they said.
The FBI’s biometric database, which includes criminal history records, communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center’s database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI’s master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects.
The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research, 45 minutes north of the FBI’s biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people’s irises at distances of as much as 15 feet and of faces from as far away as 200 yards.
Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.
Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.
Think of a Navy ship approaching a foreign vessel, said Bojan Cukic, the center’s co-director.
“It would help to know before you go on board whether the people on that ship that you can image from a distance, whether they are foreign warfighters, and run them against a database of known or suspected terrorists,” he said.
Skeptics say that such projects are proceeding before there is evidence that they reliably match suspects against a huge database.
In the world’s first large-scale scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, though promising, was not effective enough to allow its use by police.
The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily.
The study found that the technology was able to match travelers’ faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 percent to 20 percent at night.
To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening measures, the report said.
Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI’s biometric services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to “fuse” fingerprint, face, iris and palm matching capabilities by 2013, she said.
To safeguard privacy, audit trails are kept on everyone who has access to a record in the fingerprint database, Del Greco said. People may request copies of their records, and the FBI audits all agencies that have access to the database every three years, she said.
“We have very stringent laws that control who can go in there and to secure the data,” Bush said.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the ability to share data across systems is problematic.
“You’re giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate,” he said.
In 2004, Rotenberg’s group objected to the FBI’s exemption of the center’s database from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate. The group noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001 found that information in the system was “not fully reliable” and that files “may be incomplete or inaccurate.”
FBI officials justified that exemption by saying that in law enforcement data collection, “it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete.”
Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information. “Unlike say, a credit card number, biometric data is forever,” said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster.
He said he feared that the FBI, whose computer technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data’s security. “If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can’t just get a new eyeball,” Saffo said.
© 2007 The San Jose Mercury News
We knew this was coming. We can see where it’s going to go. And we thought the movie “Brazil” was science fiction? Our future is going to look like science fiction.
Think of Burma and their government. Now think of Hoover and Nixon. I won’t mention bushco. With star wars they could just shoot you from outer space after a secret trial you didn’t know was happening. “OOPS! Wrong guy”, or “His girlfriend must have been an accomplice.”
if you think this is troublesome, just wait until the gov’t, stretched thin by the grover norquist tax-cuts-for-the-rich types, decides to “privatize” these databases, as is now being done on a trial basis at certain airports.
Another thing to be concerned about is possibility for errors, intended and unintended, to occur; and the ramifications for those affected (especially if said database is adjudicated to be “accurate and impartial”). Considering “our government” already has a hard time correcting errors on its’ watch lists, this potential boondoggle combined with repression simply buggers the imagination. That this might be “handed” over to private interests simply magnifies the scariness quotient.
Let’s see, 2008 minus 1984 means that this just 24 years late.
I wonder if biometrics have accounted for plastic surgery? Or maybe you’ll have to re-register with your new set of ‘biometrics’.. this is all an extension of the eugenics movement… cataloging, tracking, and eventually selection of who can stay and who will just have to go.
“…1984 means that this just 24 years late.”
The ‘implementation’ may be late — the formed-Intent wasn’t (that was “Right on schedule”, if not a little-early)…
I’ve seen 1984 referred to as “how to” manual for the Republicans rather than as a cautionary tale.
How about just tattooing everyone on their forehead like Hitler did to the Jews going to the camps. Wouldn`t that be easy and cheap? Bush and Cheney could keep the books on us so there would not be any mistakes, and it would be a quick and efficient way to handle any suspicious characters.
“Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.”
Time to get an eyeball transplant like in ‘The Minority Report’. I wonder how many politicians and corporate executives will be in that database?
If you want to see where and how far “they” are going to go with all of this, check out the last link on this page:
http://www.sonic.net/~taryfast/destruction.html
Oh my God, one of those guys pictured there is me.
And he causeth all, both small and great,
Rich and poor, free and bond,
To receive a mark on their right hand,
Or on their forehead.
And that no man might buy or sell,
Save that he had the mark,
Or the name of the beast,
Or the number of his name.*
Revelation 13:16,17
This is way beyond 1984. The Big Brother is getting bigger and bigger, and you’re getting smaller and smaller, like a binary number, a few zeros and one’s. Like this:01000100. He’s got you all nailed down. poor thing.
Of course, the real thugs will have immunity.
http://www.oilempire.us/brazil.html
In 1984, some could smell the stench
Note the “strategy of tension”
http://www.bcimpeach.com/
The good news is that it will all be run by the same high quality professionals who still haven’t found a single terrorist, the anthrax killer, Osama, or a way to exchange emails between agencies. The same one who built the Osprey, the same one being beaten by a handful of barely armed occupation resisters, the same one who has been caught red handed every time they have broken, skirted or ignored the laws of the land and known universe.
The same one that still uses videotape. We should worry?
New Year’s Greeting for Senate emailboxes ..
(feel free to use)
It is essential for the safety of America and the world to understand the truth behind warrantless wiretapping.
It is essential that wiretapping is restricted to appropriate targets only.
Please support the Judiciary Committee’s Version of FISA. Please do not support telecom immunity.
I will happily support your continued leadership or removal from the Senate based on how you handle this critical issue.
Thank you!
You have the ‘cuteness’ biometric, Treefrog; 9 or 10 I’d guess.
always interesting, though never suprising, that we have to go all the way down to local newspapers to find this substantial story.
mastershake -always interesting, though never suprising, that we have to go all the way down to local newspapers to find this substantial story…
not to be critical, but you can also read about this on the bbc’s site. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7158723.stm
I was surprised actually, not to find this in Sci Am, but maybe I just missed it.
How long until they pre-process everyone? Maybe take everyone’s fingerprints, other biometrics, etc. as a condition to drive cars, fly, cross borders, get a job, etc.?
Just like getting burnt with a goddamned branding iron.
You can never quite tell who among us might have criminal intentions, but not the proper clearance to conduct criminal activity with immunity (getting elected, or wealthy circumstance).
that sort of pre-process thing reminds me of one of my favorite books back when, A Brave New World.
I think the warnings in that would do us good, if only we were a nation that read and learned things, rather than… neither and destroying whatever we see.
I don’t care for “criminal” versus legal actions, that is, there were, and still are a lot of rules that in no way reflect the interests of the people, you know, the plebs; society. Also, that whole marijauna thing is a nice example. I don’t believe in sending people to prison/jail for possession of marijuana.
There are already people that have to pass biometric test to get jobs, gets paid, etc. I think that any biometric material submitted to an employer should be the property of the employee and not considered the property of the employer to use how they wish.
dreamertoo…
Sorry, I couldn’t resist…
You do know that in February you will not be able to fly without permission from the DHS?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/17/9846/64393
This may be just the beginning. Soon they could be taking your blood, determining if you have the right stuff to breed more critters. If not, snip, snip.
Also, just so you know, hard disks being produced in China over the last couple of years has a virus that allows Big Brother (actually, in this case maybe just China, it was reported in Taiwan recently, but the US may be able to exploit it and use it for their own purposes) to check the contents of your hard disc when online, and the security software and operating systems have backdoors for Big Brother snooping as well.
According to the Shock Doctrine, we have 30 million surveillance cameras installed since 9/11, shooting over 4 billion hours of footage. Analytical software has been developed to scan the tapes and match up with images in a database, facilitated by digital image enhancement that corrects for the orientation of the facial image.
Things are close to being ready to go, they just need to rile the critters, get them stirred up, and then it is lock down time.
Think you will be safe camping out?. The Forest Service just bought 700 tasers. For the human critters who may have triggered an alarm from one of the surveillance cameras or yogi bear? .
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/09/19/forest-service-delivering-a-shock/
TREEFROG — My scan of your biometrics has raised a serious and possibly pernicious problem. You must return at once to security services (SS) to re-validate your records, due to inconsistencies between your available information.
We suspect that you may be a terrorist attempting to infiltrate our jungle, and have placed you on the no jump list
To wit:
Security services:
Please check your database and my conservation status.
I am not an aboreal tree frog, it should be listed in my binomial nomenclature along with any color variations and habitate requirements.
As a water spirit I am a vital part of the eco-system and a sentinal species. I am in no way a threat to riparian or aquatic systems.
I hope I’ve answered all your questions.
Well, of course the FBI is useless otherwise it wouldn’t be hanging on to Philip Haneson in the first place. It’s long time the Left fought to ABOLISH THE FBI already if there is a real Left that is !
J E Hoover wanted to put away 15,000 Americans who were disloyal to the military industrial complex.
Guess maybe they could list several million now.
I don’t know much about Jesus, but I see Satan’s work every day.
TREEFROG
“The Pentagon has already matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI’s criminal fingerprint database”
What the hell does that mean? The Iraqi’s are suspected of what, defending their homeland against in an illegal occupation? Are they criminals? Or dissidents?
Is there NO ONE within the govt. that might think this is just a tad over the edge?
KEM PATRICK
nah, they are just ‘artists’ impressions. they haven’t got your ‘real’ face yet.
REN REN
this was first seen on yahoo news about one week ago.
TREEFROG
ooooh, you don’t see many of those around, do you?
this database will be excellent for picking out racial features, which our so tolerant and just government is interested in. For the people in power, if all people appearing to be of a minority background can be identified, typified and databased, the gov can more quickly profile the people accused, and then justify further investigation. Using this database, they can basically say “he/she matched the profile of (anonymous criminal)” and use it to allow further “investigation” that is what would otherwise be a totally non-justified search.
They can use this to target people, without having to admit to it. If the features are such, like dark eyes, hair and something else.. say dark skin, they can say “William matches the profile, which justifies our search of his possessions and home.”
I can’t even begin to address the other privacy issues involved in this. I think that my own fingerprints are on record, and I worry whether that will be misused.
I want control of my information, because I know that the more the people who want something from you know about you, the lesser your chance of avoiding them manipulating the situation to their benefit.
I don’t carry identification, and given the chance, I would rather cross borders illegally than legally. To my knowledge at borders you have no freedoms. they can do to you what they please, and I want no part of it.
In employment, just like everywhere else, the comforting statement that law abiding citizens need not be concerned, is trash. I need to be concerned, because if I have done nothing wrong, why then, do you need my information. You might argue with me that convicts should not be allowed to teach preschoolers, that is possible. But if the only secure feeling you can give is that I haven’t done wrong, and so should not anticipate backlash from the system? no.
I don’t want them to have any more on me than they already do, and there is nothing I have to hide, I just hate the idea of it.
Security Services:
I’m withdrawing my request for a travel pass as too many of my species have been disappeared by this process.
I’m a Treefrog sp domesticus and if you insist on touching my skin you should wash your hands or wear gloves. You pose a much greater risk to me and I’ve reconsidered interacting with you under the present conditions.
I will continue to benefit your environment but if you continue to threaten my habitates you will have to deal with the ecological impacts. Or put another way, unless you want to eat alot insects you better let me go.
Until I’m release I will need a small dish of non-chlorinated water.
Kem
I rememeber when there were a lot more treefrogs around but they are rather shy creatures. They are a good sign when you see one.
TREEFROG — You are free to go.
If you saw MIB II, you’ll understand that we here at SS do not appreciate species that eat “vermin”.
AGAIN … these posts are better than the article. Thanks guys.
Great entertainment. (but I’m going to be suspicious of all amphibians from now on…. I saw them really going over Treefrog at a bridge by the airport… he must have something to hide…..)
I have a good solution. Move to a poor third world island nation where electricity is unreliable and the goverment can’t afford cameras everywhere. Here, the cops are so poor, they can’t even afford bullets for target practice. All that the traffic cops have is a uniform: No gun, no whistle, no radio, no motorcycle. When they yell and wave for you to pull over it’s totally the honor system. (and to my amazement everyone does.) You are required to carry I.D. which I never do, so on the rare occasion when this happens I just smile and wave and keep going. Nothing happens. The next time you pass that intersection, the cop knows you won’t pull over so he just shakes his head when you do the same dumb thing again. And traffic tickets? You ball them up and throw them out the window. The first time my wife did this I just about died. But she was right. “If it’s important to them they will come to your house and write you another one.” she explained. God what a country!
I am dreading my next trip back to the “Police States.”
Flying now is about as much fun as checking into county jail (I’ve heard.) Would it kill em, I wonder, to send all these TSA clowns to charm school? Do you think they could start with a smile and a “good morning” instead of a “YOU!” “MOVE OVER THERE!” “TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF!”
[KEM: don’t know what was up with (stark-raving) moon-man on that Indian thread; he was really on the warpath, huh? I saw the end comments too late to get in there. I forgot to check back to that one. And out here in the south pacific we don’t usually see the article for a few hours/days and by then it’s old news to you guys.]
nspire
I’ll just be on my way then by a path less choosen. I didn’t see MIBII it must be like those pesty TOADs that I have heard about. They have almost completely changed the ecology in places like Yosemite.
Pacplyer
I don’t know about this stuff in the article, somehow it doesn’t make me feel safer. Wear clean sox and try to stay out of trouble. :o)
Most of these articles simply cover-up the massive amount of research, experimentation and implementation of surveillance technologies over the past decades.
These technologies include astounding developments in optics including pattern matching holographics.
So where is this technology today? For at least two decades, we have had the ability to interlay. An interlay is a depth image (hologram) that can be fused (interlaid) with a subject/object.
What does this mean? It means that not only do we have the possibility to make holographic images of everyone; these images can be interlaid and used to ‘prompt’ behaviors.
The image itself is not completely immaterial in that it is a ‘dense field’ waveform and thus can be manipulated to ’suggest’ (initiate) activity.
Without the knowledge that one has been interlaid, a person will assume that ‘impulses’, ‘insights’, etc. are self-originating.
This technology is extremely important in battle field settings to induce behaviors, even moods, but it can also be used to robotize anyone, even in a boardroom.
If you are really interested in biometrics, the one field that must be addressed is all the advances that have been made by the Air Force, NASA and others working on these top secret optical weapons and population control programs.
Furthermore, these technologies were deployed for testing purposes as they were being developed and were used on many unwitting victims in the US, children and adults.
At this time, we have fully operational members of our society acting in police, military and corporate capacities that unbeknownst to them have been under interlay guidance virtually their entire lives.
The VA is doing brain scans of people with mental disorders and calling it “Biometric Research.”
TREEFROG — the main MIB II antagonist is a 30′ tyrannosaurus-like cockroach (a big bad bug = BBB), which “folds” itself up into a human ‘meat sack’, so as to disguise his Earth activities attempting to takeover an entire galaxy (the size of a marble) dangling from the neck of an alien cat. The nasty ‘meat sack’ cloaked one really gets baleful onto an unsuspecting human who has a raid-challenged roach infestation (of BBB’s relatives). Just like a “family” of rethuglican looking after their own, they don’t like “non-species” predation.
“A path less chosen”, even for you it’s LOCATION location location ?
MUNCH1 — any links that you’ve got to “size” this multidimensionality entrainment of our neurotic pathways?
It appears that they’ve gone a trifle beyond binaural subliminal tones and synchronized flashing light signals, to direct holographic re-programing?