FBI Plans Nationwide Face-Recognition Trials In 2012

hessian writes with this excerpt: "The FBI by mid-January will activate a nationwide facial recognition service in select states that will allow local police to identify unknown subjects in photos, bureau officials told Nextgov. The federal government is embarking on a multiyear, $1 billion overhaul of the FBI's existing fingerprint database to more quickly and accurately identify suspects, partly through applying other biometric markers, such as iris scans and voice recordings."

Comments

Them muslims are prescient

[Anonymous Coward]

Burqahs gonna be fashionable in 2012.

$1 billion dollar overhaul

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all you need to know.

Did I just imply that this entire "initiative" is nothing but a smokescreen for raking more cash through the hands of the elite who control the business of government?

You're god damn right I did.

And how likely is that?

[TubeSteak]

[Thomas E. Bush III, who helped develop NGI's system requirements when he served as assistant director of the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services division between 2005 and 2009, said] said, "We do have the capability to search against each other's systems," but added, "if you don't come to the attention of law enforcement you don't have anything to fear from these systems."

I'm going to quote an old post from the "DMCA Abuse Widespread" article:

Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying . They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.

It is inevitable that once the capabilities are present, they will be abused.
The scale of the abuse is only limited by how much money the government is willing to spend on auditing and enforcement.

And $3B later...

[gstrickler]

it will either work poorly, or will be scrapped.