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52 Million Photos In FBI's Face Recognition Database By Next Year
Advocatus Diaboli writes "The EFF has been investigating the FBI's Next-Generation Identification (NGI) scheme, an enormous database of biometric information. It's based on the agency's fingerprint database, which already has 100 million records. But according to the documents EFF dug up, the NGI database will include 52 million images of people's faces by 2015. At least 4.3 million images will have been taken outside any sort of criminal context. 'Currently, if you apply for any type of job that requires fingerprinting or a background check, your prints are sent to and stored by the FBI in its civil print database. However, the FBI has never before collected a photograph along with those prints. This is changing with NGI. Now an employer could require you to provide a 'mug shot' photo along with your fingerprints. If that's the case, then the FBI will store both your face print and your fingerprints along with your biographic data.'"
Let's see how they handle that, as I keep messing around with facial hair 8^{)>
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
and we are one step closer to a 1984 'Big Brother is watching' world....
and active investigations only my ass -they will stockpile this for the rest of our lives and when they find some association 20 years from now they will backtrack all the way to all other associations NSA 'metadata' style with the same deniability.
-I'm just sayin' -we're screwed
They should just steal Facebooks database.
The camera goes 'click'
You're in DB, like Rick
But we've got the trick
To make your chin slick
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Just remember that the best defense against being falsely accused of a crime is to SHUT UP. Exercise your right to remain silent or in England and Canada reply no comment to every question. You do NOT want to waste your time doing battle with cops who couldn't care less if you are guilty or innocent. You are just a means to an end to them. They will elect whoever they think they can take down for the rap.
One more reason not to be an employee. Work for yourself.
Of course, they're going to get your photo in other ways. Facebook, blogs, etc.
A lot of people aren't aware that thanks to a law passed by California voters, if you are arrested for a felony (or a possible felony) in California, your DNA will be collected and held in a government database indefinitely
Note that you only have to be arrested for what might be later possibly considered a felony for this to occur. You don't have to be convicted. Not even charged. Everyone who is arrested in California is arrested fairly and ultimately charged and convicted... right, Occupy Oakland people?
This has even been challenged and upheld by the 9th district.
This law was passed by a 9/11-frightened public in 2004. Would such a law pass now? I strongly doubt it.
These records are never expunged.
Not sure what the big news is.... like we didn't already know this? They probably already have access to every state's DMV records, which include photographs for every person who has a driver's license or ID card. I would estimate that is maybe 90% of every adult citizen, alone.
And yes, it upsets me.... far less than fingerprinting or DNA, however. The only privacy-friendly biometrics are those that we don't "leave" all over the place, and can't be collected or taken without our knowledge. That leaves things like retinal scans and deep vein pattern recognition.
I'm not quite certain how from a population of 316M people you can obtain 52M photos when the point of collection are federal background checks. With roughly 200M persons of working age, that would mean that within the next two years roughly 1 out of 4 people will be facing a work related federal security clearance check or having criminal charges filed against them. I'm not buying it. Either the 52M is bogus or they're collecting photos by other less savory mean.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
That's a factor of 100 less than what's available in Facebook's and Google's databases separately.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I have *0* respect for a person who submits to photographs, fingerprints, credit checks or drug tests to get a job.
If you don't have enough self-respect to not sell your identity for a job then you're not worth my time.
I don't respond to AC's.
Does this database include the pics and fingerprints taken each time I enter the USA (as a EU-citizen)?
We need clear laws on what law enforcement and government agencies are allow to know about us, not how they gain that data. Do we want the government to be able to track everyone's motions. If not, then it shouldn't matter if they use cell phone data, face recognition, satellite photos, tracking implants, or invisible flying monkeys that follow people around, it shouldn't be legal.
If we do want to allow the government to track out motions, then we should let them us the least expensive, most efficient technology available. Simply making it difficult but not impossible is crazy , WE (the tax payers of the country in question) are the ones paying for the service, we are just making it more expensive for ourselves.
People clearly disagree on how much tracking is OK, but that it true for a wide variety of societal decisions, we should go through the normal legislative process.
Yes they did, in the 9th and 10th Amendments. The trouble is all the people who can't count past the 2nd and don't care if they take all the other rights away.
Learn to love Alaska
The DMV.
It is fun to pick on facebook though.
There are so many opportunities to take and retake your photos these days. Every time you come to a traffic light you stand a high chance of being photographed by traffic cameras. I bet that stores and banks provide footage, often done with some tax incentives. Your clothes have RFID tags from the time you bought them. Yes, it can be possible to change clothes or microwave them, but I am sure that there is some error correction going on once these systems have amassed redundant data. Also, there are other systems out there, i.e. your faces's and eye's major blood vessels form a unique pattern for much the same reasons that your fingerprints do. Even people's stride is somewhat characteristic. Apparently so is writing style I am sure that data fusion is on the minds of many a NSA analysts.
More people wearing head coverings like in Star Wars.
Personally I'm thinking of exercising my rights, as a western white male, to dress as a muslim woman and don a Burqa.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
1. driver's license photos. There are several states that are already incorporating them into their facial recognition systems. This will accelerate. It needs to stop. (See #2)
2. the accuracy of these systems coupled with the increasing poor job police and investigatory (national security, etc) agencies are doing actually using these kinds of tools means that your chances of getting hit for a false positive is rapidly accelerating. It will wreck lives. It will get people (on both sides) killed.
3. I have been first-hand for discussions whereby state criminal justice officials have boasted about the aforementioned accelerations. There are, absolutely, policies in place in some states to ACTIVELY and AGGRESSIVELY "criminalize" citizens to "get them in the system". This is no conspiracy theory, it IS happening. It has been written about extensively by legal bloggers like Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and the group over at Volokh Conspiracy. But make no mistake, it is a targeted campaign by authoritative "governments" (I put that in quotes, because they certainly do NOT adhere to the tenets of governance set forth in the founding of the United States, "of, by, and for") against YOU! They are organized, well funded, and committed to success...you will lose.
And this is merely the beginning, as the stories that have already been written warn.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
According the wikipedia, the number of pictures being seen as the same with probability p is =sqrt(2d * ln(1/1-p)) If d is 52,000,000 and we use a 99% probability, then for each 21,884.6 pictures we get a false positive with a perfectly accurate matcher. And there are no perfect matchers.
This is a variant of the birthday paradox, where it only takes 100 people to get a 99.9% chance of them having the same birthday, and a mere 23 people to get a 50% chance [wikipedia].
The German Federal Security Service rejected facial matching years ago, for exactly this reason, when I was working for Siemens. The Americans did not, and supposedly stopped someone's grandma for being a (younger, male) terrorist.
If they use this, expect a week or so of everyone's grandma being arrested (;-))
--dave
Mathematicians, please feel free to check me on the numbers: I suspect I'm rather low...
davecb@spamcop.net
The last time I had to get my license renewed, I had to go to the DMV... After finally getting called to have my photo taken, I was asked to remove my glasses for my new picture. The first thing that crossed my mind of facial recognition.
Anybody else experienced this?
You might think it won't happen to you but it only takes a few decades for things to go horribly horribly wrong (see German history...Nazi...) You might think your modern citizens are somehow wiser or smarter or more evolved-- well, maybe so (debatable) but the techniques used HAVE evolved.
People escaped, people resisted, and underground networks were extremely important in winning WW2. Will such things even be possible in the future? If your nation has the system already active and in place, it is just another weapon which can be turned against you in the worst of situations. People probably can't imagine the creative abuses that can be done now and will become possible.
Chaos and insecurity must be tolerated -- you'll never get completely safe and the risk of it going bad is so great long term it is an extremely foolish move to box people in. People are so easy to scare and so extremely cowardly - some fear is ok but a lot of it these days it is BS and people need to "grow a pair". Perhaps if everybody had to spend a few years commuting by bicycle to work among the traffic they'd learn to manage some risk.
Go ahead and buy many guns....useless move. does not prevent anything and it can't resist much either.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
They not robots arrest, at least for now, and they have eyes to compare to the original photo.
The (supposed) grandma incident had the clerk acting robot-like and sending her for "random extra screening" and the screener, expecting an armed or bomb-carrying desparado, complaining that the clerk and/or computer was insane...
davecb@spamcop.net
Fuck the government
That is about 174 facebook accounts for 1 month. Unless they had a baby, then it is just one account one weekend.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.