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FBI Bringing Biometric Photo Scanning To North Carolina, Via DMV
AHuxley writes "The FBI is getting fast new systems to look at local North Carolina license photos via the DMV. As the FBI is not authorized to collect and store the photos, they use the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles. The system takes seconds to look at chin widths and nose sizes. The expanded technology used on millions of motorist could be rolled out across the USA. The FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System is also getting an upgrade to DNA records, 3-D facial imaging, palm prints and voice scans."
NH gives you the option to have your picture removed from their database after they print your license. Too bad more states aren't that progressive. Why is Government even allowed to use our driver licenses for anything other than driving, anyways? I don't even carry mine unless I'm driving. Why would I?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I think this was tried in Florida (as the article notes) back in 2002 but was killed instantly. It seems the trial run had focused on true positives meaning that they only reported numbers on when a person who was in the database was identified correctly. But overlooked the false positives, especially regarding someone who was not in the database being identified incorrectly as being in the database of criminals. Now, that ate up so much time it was instantly canceled. Of course, the FBI have figured out how to reduce this by combining many biometrics and it's now not okay to smile when you get your license picture taken where I live (planning for the future of biometrics, I suppose).
Does anyone know what the rates are for false positives in this new system? How much time is wasted double checking results?
My work here is dung.
Write your governor, state representatives, federal representatives, and your DMV to let them know how you feel.
Especially if you are a resident of NC. I for one would be pretty pissed off if I was forced to participate in a (virtual) line-up.
Ignoring the Big Brother/Police state implications for the moment : how well does this technology actually work? How accurate could the measurement of chin width/nose size be if you only have a single photo to make measurements from? With a large uncertainty in your data, I would imagine that there would be many collisions in the database.
It doesn't seem likely that a camera could be set up somewhere in the state that could recognize any North Carolina resident with a driver's license. More likely than not, there would be thousands of hits for each face that walked by the camera, even if the subject wasn't in the database.
had the NC DMV told the FBI to kindly go Cheney itself when issued the request? Seems they are under no obligation to share, but chose to do so. Now I wonder what the NC DMV is getting from the Feds in return...
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
...but they can't see through my tin foil mask!
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
They have caught a couple people but investigated dozens of innocent people. And the AP reporter picture came back as a possible terrorism suspect. You want to end up in an FBI report associated with a terrorist? Even if they clear you out later?
Hopefully they figure out the mistake before you end up where ever they'll be sending terror suspects after GTMO closes.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I am not normally an alarmist, but the fearmongers of the past 8 years have helped make this happen. This is the beginning of a police state.
As seen above, there is more money and time spent investigating innocent people than actually capturing guilty. This IS guilty until proven innocent.
It will recognize threats to society like terrorists, illegal aliens, and UNC fans.
Yea, right. I'm half Pacific Islander, I don't think my three facial hairs will do much good.
We are the Borg...
Personally, I am for a national ID system - and a national ID card. Verify social security numbers and biometric data (and even DNA) - and unless govt screws the pooch - identity theft is a thing of the past.
I suggest you listen to your own arguments, might change your mind.
Keeping the pictures on hand does help to prove identity theft. Back in the 90's I sold a couple of cell phones to a guy who'd actually gotten some one else's nfo by rooting through his gym bag. The ID looked like a genuine ID from the DMV because it was. But being the criminal mastermind he was, he didn't realize the DMV would have a copy of the ID with his picture and the other fellows name. Awkward. By not keeping the photos, you'd make it much harder to prove it wasn't you.
All this information collection as of late is getting a bit disturbing. I work for a bank and I had managed to go 28 years without being fingerprinted, until this year. I have nothing to hide nor fear but I definately do not like having my biometric information floating around out there. I could care less about my social security number and all that, its just inforamtion that can not be directly tied to me. However as a law abiding citizen I take issue with ALL of my information being documented. Part of the patriot act required that every employee working for a bank get finger printed, background checked, photographed, etc. Thanks GWB Lets just make it easier for somebody to steal identities. Seems like the cold war all over again except this time its the government ploting a war against its own citizens.
Somebody's going to moderate you troll for what you've said, but I don't think that'd be entirely fair... I do, however, feel that I should address what you're saying...
I don't want the government to have its grubby mitts on my DNA. I don't object to photo identification. I don't even object to having my fingerprints in a national database, even though fingerprints have been shown to be falsifiable, and aren't really all that reliable as a 100% certain way to identify somebody. I do, however, object to the idea of the government taking a sample of my DNA for a very simple reason: it's private. While it is a slippery slope argument, have you ever seen the movie Gattaca? I don't live in the US, but you need to prove your identity to do a great many things, including buying health insurance. If your DNA is part of that identity proof, how long is it going to be before companies start looking through the sequence for markers, and decide that your car insurance rate is going to be 3X as high as mine because you have a marker that indicates you might be slightly more predisposed to narcilepsy?
Quite aside from that, DNA evidence as a means of identifying somebody has been called into question. The genome as it resides in you changes over time, developping small mutations with cell division. Beyond that, there's 3.2million base pairs in the human genome, which would take an inordinate amount of time to sequence completely. As a result, a DNA test usually only looks at certain indicators, rather than the whole sequence. The possibility for false positives resides in members of your own family... even "distant" relations have the possibility of generating a false positive on a search through a DNA database, with the probability increasing as you reduce the number of comparison points that they store. When you're considering a database with hundreds of millions of data points, with the potential for billions if it's expanded to a global scale, you're going to run into a feasibility issue: if you want to store that many records, you either spend billions of dollars developping and maintaining a computer system that's capable of storing and searching through that many records (and allowing fudging in the search to account for mutations due to aging), or you start making decisions as to which search points to store, and which to drop.
And in response to your point:
Have you ever heard of police tunnel vision? We've got a match from the DNA database. Sure it's only 80%, but clearly it must be them! The police have been known on many many occasions to ignore evidence that proves the innocence of their suspect because they've decided that the suspect must be guilty. Often, it's only come to light after the suspect has been convicted, and sometimes it's not until after that wrongly accused suspect has been executed. (one such case is actually why capital punishment is illegal in Canada)
So no. You're not going to get your hands on my DNA for national identification. There's other ways to ID me, thanks.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I lived the past 9 years without TV — watching it only in gym sometimes. Yes, we do have a TV-set — but no cable (our Internet comes via DSL). I think, I've ignored Timewarner/Comcast/whoever it is, whom the government gave my part of town as a monopoly.
The GP's point is valid — ignoring corporations is far easier, than the government.
The government's only acceptable role is ensuring, various corporations compete in providing a service or making goods, rather than collude. When the government attempts to provide the same service themselves (having declared the oxymoronic "market failure"), you get the worst of both worlds — government's inefficiency and a monopoly's arrogance.
I do hope, we don't get to experience this ourselves again in health care. Public schools, USPS, and highways are enough...
Yes, that's called Fascism. Some people ascribe this to Obama administration, as it aims to take over corporations. Calling him "Hitler" over this misses the point, though, (and triggers Godwin's Law) — Nazism is an aberration of Fascism and Obama does not deserve the mustaches printed on his portraits (although they do make me glee, because Bush deserved it even less).
Things sucked in Mussolini's Italy and in Franco's Spain, without the death camps. One need not be genocidal to destroy economy...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.