Slashdot Mirror
FBI Prepares Vast Database of Biometrics
MacRonin sends us to the Washington Post for a story about the FBI's plans for a large biometric identification database. The Post also has a chart detailing the characteristics of the different methods of identification. We discussed the ethics of a similar situation a few months ago. Quoting the Post:
"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."
I can't get this ending line out of my head... "He loved Big Brother."
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
This is definitely something scary. Many employers might require you to hand over your prints to the FBI - but at the same time, you don't exactly want government to have everything on you if haven't committed a crime. Wasn't their a bill which was designed to prohibit enforceable gathering of biometric data by employers?
The FBI already retains fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks, at least for companies registered with the SEC. What may be new is the retention for other employers.
Developers: We can use your help.
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.
You can get arrested for anything these days and now the FBI is going to become your employers watchdog? I've seen some dickish, big brother behavior since 9-11 but this tops the suck pyramid.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Clearly they are getting a headstart by treating all visitors to America as suspects: getting your eyes scanned and both index fingers printed is no kind of "welcome". A few years ago it was a completely different experience.
How am I supposed to try and keep my irises private if they can be read without my knowledge?!
What am I supposed to do? Get tin-foil-sunglasses?
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
... in another story today someone made the '+5 insightful' proposition that a 64bit OS could address 'enough' memory during 'our lifetime'. Well, figure it.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Haven't you guys read 1984 or Brave New World? Be thankful that is not the world we live in today!
"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"...
It's a great way to profit from the coming federal contracts! It doesn't matter to them that the "Science" was debunked a century ago... We'll dress it up with some new buzzwords and make millions!
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
This could be good. It will demonstrate how useless "biometrics" are for identifying an individual from a set of millions. All biometrics used in these identity databases are reduced from actual photographs and measurements and represent lossy compression. As soon as you have lossy compression, you can have many to one mappings that make the usefulness for identity checks limited.
10 year contracts are not common for software projects in the federal government. 10 years of engineering and support is a serious undertaking by a major federal agency. Taking this down will require a similarly serious effort if people are serious about pursuing that.
I use a toothbrush myself. Anyway, does this mean you are suspect if you ever stopped by a cop? So much for this actually being guilty of anything, now it's just if you are even questioned. I'm not sure who's worse, the employers or the gov't. Either way, you all still have a chance to make a change, until after the primaries. Don't lock yourselves in.
What?
you will find that the majority of americans won't be disturbed by this. there are some who will use this as proof that most americans are morons. as if insulting the average citizen is supposed to win you any points in the battle against big/ intrusive government, oh great genius?
no, the average american won't care, because the average american, when given news like this, doesn't see a big downside to this. when told the downside to this as displayed here in some posts, they will think the average slashdot poster has been watching too many paranoid hollywood movies
now give my troll mod for not toeing the party line here
yawn
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just who's the boss?
Deleted
That's the thing, mistakes are made and if the Government starts acting like the Dept. of Homeland Security and refuse to show you your file and correct it for "security reasons", basically your life will be fucked because of incompetence or even malice. The "law and order types" are all for it but they just have way too much faith in technology and our Government's ability to act with our best interests and freedom in mind.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
will be "FBI merges with Google to form Spoogle or spy.google.com/iBlackmail where you can get ALL the compromising information about anyone in the world for the small price of taking a look at a few ads."
at the FBI, NSA and CIA. They are trying to get these programs up and running before the changing of the guard.
Hopefully you're trolling, but sadly a lot of people actually believe that.
What they fail to comprehend is that the "criminal" element is just as evenly dispersed among government jobs as among the rest of society. When you create a huge power differential between those holding certain government jobs and the rest of us, you are empowering the criminals on that side as well as the good people on that side.
This is what happens when you try to pre-assign people "goodness" ratings based on what job they hold. You end up with a subset of vastly overpowered criminals (granted power by the laws themselves) and no net decrease in what we commonly regard as criminal behavior (killing, theft, fraud, etc.).
The only sane way to assign arbitrary power to law enforcers is to maintain constant oversight of them, in a circular fashion -- the police watch the citizens, the citizens watch a police oversight body, and the police oversight body watches the police. That we neglect to do this is a serious mistake, and it results in a police force that behaves like it can get away with anything ethical or unethical (and often does).
and perhaps even the unique ways people walk
So we're going to see the Ministry of Silly Walks?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
And this is exactly what bothers me so much about the U.S. government these days. I'm an American, and even though I don't know you I wish you could visit the country without be treated like a dangerous felon.
Well, there is a philosophical conflict raging here. There's obviously people who want to get into the US to perform terrorist acts. This leaves us with 3 choices:
1. Screen every visitor carefully
2. Screen only "suspicious" people (profiling based on religion, etc. and is often considered "racist".)
3. Don't screen anybody, risking attacks
4. Don't allow visitors
I don't see any 5th option, only compromises between these 4. Thus, what are the alternatives and/or ratios of these 4 that you think are the best?
Other countries don't have terrorist problems (yet), and so they don't have to perform intrusive procedures.
Table-ized A.I.
I guess since the FBI has previously demonstrated its prowess in implementing technology projects, with (inter alia) the Virtual Case File fiasco, and the SirCam infection of their National Infrastructure Protection Center, it's time for them to move on to a higher level. It's good to know we can still count on the Peter Principle.
we're intending for the deceptive murderous corepirate nazis to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather'.
/.) continues to attempt to shed some light on yOUR foibles;
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
meanwhile, the life0cidal philistines continue on their path of death, debt, & disruption for most of US;
gov. bush denies health care for the little ones
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/03/bush.veto/index.html
whilst demanding/extorting billions to paint more targets on the bigger kids
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/12/bush.war.funding/index.html
all is not lost/forgotten/forgiven
(yOUR elected) president al gore (deciding not to wait for the much anticipated 'lonesome al answers yOUR questions' interview here on
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3046116.ece
There is only one way out: make everyone a criminal. It only takes one virus spamming random threats to random notables and half the population will soon be considered a dangerous terrorist threat, thereby overflowing the system resources.
Change the colour of a pretty graphic on TV from red to blue? That's about the only difference people have the power to effect.
Have fun picking a new jailer.
In the US of A you went from "not a life form of any kind" to "probable terror suspect" on the day you were born!
To boldly use to and too two times and get it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!
Not defending this in any way, but I think the "big, scary, Republican USA" angle is an easy way out. Interpol already has a system like this, and the FBI's goes on regardless of administration.
I thought they shut down a very similar database recently. Upon hearing the news someone here said it would reappear soon enough. True dat.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Correction: I stated I listed 3, but there's really 4. (That's what happens when English does not support array max index size variables and you have to hard-wire the upper bounds :-)
Table-ized A.I.
I dream of a world where everything was covered in semen
The same FBI that couldn't put together an email system in 2 years with a few hundred million bucks. The good news is BIG BROTHER isn't competent, the bad news is that he has no idea he isn't competent. The big problem with that is that he carries a gun, and because the people he deals with on a regular basis are the only people in the world even more brutally stupid than he is, he never figures out he's a little slow. If it can be abused it will be. I bet the false positive ratio will be greater than 1000 to 1 with this baby. It won't catch many, if any, bad guys, but it will result in countless innocent people being "interviewed" by Bubba the $9 an hour security guard at the airport. Good luck with that. Time to leave the USA. The fascists have won.
The average person will simply think the government is doing more to look out for *them*.
A few false arrests and multi-year imprisonments because of a software bug or flaw in the biometric database? Just the price to be paid for security.
That particular way of thinking sickens me, but it's quite prevalent. Many people (my mother included) would far rather see 10 innocents imprisoned than one guilty man go free. Because they're terrorists or something.
I try to explain that I know have Iranian family on my father's side and next time it could be me that's falsely accused of associating with and aiding people (incorrectly) thought to be terrorists. But that doesn't seem to get through, that there could ever be a mistake. Somewhere in the back of a lot of folks minds there's this strong conviction that mistakes like that just don't happen, despite multiple high profile examples to the contrary, and even if they do, it doesn't matter because they don't think it can happen to them. Because why would it? I'm a good person, why would the government arrest me?
At that point I usually give up trying to argue and go back to mourning the state of the world. No, it doesn't win me any points, realising that the average person is about as questioning of authority as a faithful puppy, it is unfortunately the true state of the world though.
Isn't this a classic definition of fascism ? I mean the government being a puppet of firm & corporation ? Because if I read that right, this more or less means the FBI suddenly become a special police specifically helping policing employee of corporation... I could be wrong on the definition, though...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Using biometric data is a dangerous road IMHO. If biometric authentication is performed under very tightly controlled conditions then it may be difficult to spoof but the more widespread it becomes the less controlled the conditions will be (the more people involved the higher the chance of stupid people overseeing the process). You can tighten up a server. even Windows (-; so that it is very difficult to penetrate, but when you have billions of I.T. admins running servers you're going to have some loosening of security. See, Dr. Evil was right when he said "Why make billions when we can make ... millions". His stupid son just didn't see the big picture which is why he'll always just be Dr. Evils son.
It may become an arms race between the bio-crackers and the security vendors, just like software viruses. I'm pretty sure people will get retinal transplants if they think it will make them a million dollars USD. You'll have people sitting around in a cubicle talking about how stupid an idea it was for a guy to have a retinal transplant but one will pipe up and say "The guy made a million dollars". Then the guy will "jump to the conclusion" that he should do it, have it botched, go blind, and sue the surgeon for millions. Then he'll have a BBQ in which he'll tell his former co-workers if they just hang in there long enough "good things can happen to them too". But I digress.
The scariest thing I can think of when it comes to biometric security is that it will just lead to an escalation of violent crime. Before cars had security systems the guy would just steal your car when you weren't there. Now he'll pull you out of the car, pistol whip you, shoot your hysterical wife and drive off with your children in the back seat. Maybe it's a flawed correlation but it seems like car jacking took off at the same time as car security systems. Now, instead of stealing your password, he'll cut out your eyes. True story here Malaysia car thieves steal finger
This database the FBI is building is so large and so open to corruption through GIGO, that it may make for a very scary country indeed.
Maybe the FBI could just hire attractive 21 year old blonde unemployed models and assign one per household to watch over us. Criminals may never want to leave their house.
What they fail to comprehend is that the "criminal" element is just as evenly dispersed among government jobs as among the rest of society.
As a member of the general public, I take umbrage with that statement. I'm convinced that there is a far greater representation of the criminal element in modern government (at least, in "elected" and appointed office) than in the rest of society. The same can be said of the business executive level.
When you create a huge power differential between those holding certain government jobs and the rest of us, you are empowering the criminals on that side
Exactly. And that is what I think attracts people with criminal tendencies to government office and to business executive. The power and potential rewards are so great as to act like a magnet to people with criminal tendencies.
First of all, it'll allow you to see, at the interview stage, if you'll be working for a bunch of crooks.
Second, if companies do start to take "brushes with the law" into account for career advancement, it sounds like a relative in law-enforcement could be the fast track to promotion.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Is that you won't need to have bar codes tattooed to your forehead. It's the same thing, minus the ink.
That is, until the people are tagged like cattle currently are. It's only a matter of time. Escape from prison while you still can.
Who didn't see this coming?
There is an open alternative to this kind of biometric snooping: CheapID. It's a digital identity standard, and a protocol for having a court order be required before the police, or other government agencies, could run a biometric search on the Big Database. It enforces that standard by moving the Big Database to an international level, but encrypting the metadata attached to each record - including fields like name - in a way which means the people with access to the database can't *do* anything with it, because there is no information about *people* in the database (like names,) only information about their physical bodies. Data stripped of metadata is largely worthless, and to unstrip an item needs a court decrypt from a national government.
From http://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php
This paper shows how we can manage large scale biometrics databases and increase the amount of privacy we have from government snooping while still having a secure society.
The basic crux of this paper is that you can separate the biometrics database, which simply identifies your physical body, and isn't necessarily any more intrusive than Flickr or any other online photo sharing site, and the reputation database, which stores things like your credit rating, any criminal record, and the suspicions of various government agencies about your intentions.
So when you do something like rent a car, you give them a token which has your face on it. They match your face to the token, and say "ok, this token is valid." But the token doesn't have your name, or your SSN, or anything else on it: it's totally sterile. But if you steal the car, they take the token to court, as well as the proof you gave it to them, and the court uses the token to get your name, SSN and other details.
If all that FBI or other government biometrics database stored was tokens, and it required a court order to go from a match in the biometrics database to a name and street address, I think we'd have a fair balance between civil liberties and security. A database of pictures of faces or fingerprints is not the intrusive part: it's the connecting of your face or your fingerprint to your background that is the intrusion, and we can separate the two databases and require a court order (and a crypto key) to reconnect them.
Cheap DNA scanners are coming. We've have to fix how we handle biometric data as a society before they arrive.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
The extreme desire for power over others is a mental disorder. It should be recognized and treated as such.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
YEAH! Lets all move to Germany or the UK, instead!
I had to go to New York on family business in 2006. The US requires you to leave fingerprints at the airport. And even though it is very easy nowdays to fool fingerprint scanners, I didn't want to risk something like this and be thrown out the country. And since US government agencies are very "open" about their data (any person posing as a business that needs to screen potential employees can get extensive background information), I used to worry about the fact that any idiot can now download my fingerprint and frame me for a crime if they wanted to.
But then again Germany now has biometric passports. So any idiot with a RFID scanner can do the same.
In the end that means that biometric data/security is nothing worth anything anymore. I wonder how long it will take criminal defense lawyers to realize that one.
Actually we're more likely to ee silly walks outlawed.
If you're walking unusually, you must be doing it to throw off the tracking software, and if you're trying to throw off the tracking, then you must be intending to commit a crime, citizen.
I actually worked a bit on some of the theory behind gait recognition when I was a student. Interesting from a technical perspective but scary as hell in terms of what it could be used for. Other than the obvious of course. The classic example of legitimate use is a bank robbery where cctv footage is too low res to make out faces. But it could be used for much more.
...and don't forget that there is little disincentive, especially at the higher levels. seriously, how much real pain is there for someone in a position of power whose greatest punishment is to be sent packing? you or i can jaywalk and be penalized out of all proportion, yet those higher on the political food-chain can use/abuse their power and get off without much (if any) material repurcussion. things are severely out of balance.
You trolls don't know what is best for you. You should realize that every single bit of money that helps Ron Paul without hurting someone, is great. This just mean some crazy people have less money, and Ron Paul has more. That's just fantastic!
Don't worry, the Ron Paul internet zombies have all kinds of talking point rebuttals to that. Some crap about how taking their money is the ultimate insult - maybe someone should tell that to all those industry groups and lobbyists in DC.
I wonder how well it would go over if he took money from radical Islamic fundamentalists.
Just remember that he works for George W. Bush. Then decide how to treat him.
"I don't do anything wrong, so I have nothing to worry about; this is for the criminals and terrorists"
Yeah, it's only *those people*, the criminals, the other, that we want to deny their rights. If you are innocent then you have nothing to fear.
The summary is 99% vaporware. The FBI people that are spending the money on this boondoggle are over promising on a big IT project. It's not going to work out the way everyone thinks it will. I replied before I checked if anyone from the biometrics industry replied, so hopefully I'm repeating what they said.
1. Data isn't shared or otherwise capable of being shared. Biometric systems from the gui all the way back to the template that's stored is proprietary. Short-story, biometric systems are a GIANT black box. The biometric scenarios in the summary are just wrong. 100% wrong.
2. I'm not aware of any gov't agencies operating as the paragon of customer service, so they are going to start now?????
3. I'm too lazy to dig up the stories about the FBI's IT problems. But they've got em and another silo won't make them more effective.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
of equal import, which escapes you and the majority of paranoid posters you will find in this thread, is that blind distrust is equally moronic
the american government is not satan incarnate. it is also not the paragon of virtue. it is mostly bumbling bureaucrats who mean well
so when people go at the american government like they are talking about a sneaky evil out to enslave all of mankind, they sound like retarded matrix fanboys, not intelligent wary citizens out protecting our freedoms
did you hear that? if you want to defend yourself from an intrusive government and influence the minds of your fellow citizens to be more wary, you can be more effective in that fight by not sounding like you are fighting emperor palpatine. hysteria, a malignant distrust of government, fear, uncertainty, doubt: this will not protect us from what bothers you. because you simply don't understand what you are up against: you are up stupidity in the government, not evil in the government. your inability to perceive the nature of your enemy makes you engage in phantom battles with phantom foes that make you look stupid and foolish. no one listens to you, no one will be influenced by you, no one will follow you. you are all alone, on the fringe of absurdity
now you can mod me into obvlivion, i am obviously an employee of the illuminati, here on a retarded thread on slashdot, casting aspersions on the brave enlightened truth seekers here (rolls eyes)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
so is blind distrust
in this life, you can suffer from too much blind trust for authority. absolutely 100% true
but equally true, which escapes many people here, is that you can also suffer from a poverty in your ability to trust anything remotely government like
this is not wisdom, it is a deficit in reasoning
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"the american government is not satan incarnate"
And nowhere did I say it was.
"it is also not the paragon of virtue. it is mostly bumbling bureaucrats who mean well"
Agreed, partially. It's also made up of people who specific moral agendas and biases, prejudices and (worse, IMHO) those who are willing to sell out the people they are representing for their own political, social or financial gain.
"so when people go at the american government like they are talking about a sneaky evil out to enslave all of mankind, they sound like retarded matrix fanboys, not intelligent wary citizens out protecting our freedoms"
Please quote where I have said they are sneaky evil out to enslave mankind. Please quote, in fact, where I made the slightest comment about the character of the government. I expressed worry at people's complacency and total trust of authority, I didn't sat "because they're hiding the alien corpses and the human vivisection plants"
Don't let that stop your nice rant though, I know you enjoy one cts.
That's the real problem. Once you manage to win against a given agency, there's three or four others doing the same thing and by that time its perfectly legal.
I refer you to the official site of the United States Intelligence Community.
Good luck taking on that list.
Next thing you know, the plumbing from your toilet will route directly into an FBI office that will collect biometric information from your shit to determine what you've been eating lately. This will help law enforcement officials track down criminals who fart while committing crimes.
There's 200 countries out there, you've got plenty of choices.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Money is power. It is goods and services. With it you can enact your will, without it, you cannot. The fact that it plays right into the hands of certain power hungry politicians and their appointed/unelected officials is just unfortunate for us. It really has nothing to do with chance.
Deleted
Every country is a bad place to live.
It just depends on what kinds of bullshit you are willing to endure.
I bet if you're having a sensor 'down under' you could use those metrics too, but sensor pollution is going to be a pain.
..
:-).
And so will accidental dietary changes.. excuse me
Ugh. Must have been something I ate
Insert