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EFF and MuckRock Need Your Help Tracking Biometric Surveillance
v3rgEz writes: Police departments are increasingly tracking your face, your fingerprints, your tattoos — and even your DNA. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock are working to uncover how local agencies are tracking you and bring some much-needed transparency to the murky world of biometric surveillance through a free public records audit: Just put in some basic information about an agency near you, and they'll publicly file a request to see what vendors your city is using, how they protect your privacy, and more.
But everyone prefers to talk about politics in the above thread.
So many cameras everywhere. Where do I begin? Hmm, guess I'll start with the house.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Fingerprints and other biometric data go always to the FBI's IAFIS and are kept for god only knows how long.
What is included in IAFIS: Not only fingerprints, but corresponding criminal histories; mug shots; scars and tattoo photos; physical characteristics like height, weight, and hair and eye color; and aliases. The system also includes civil fingerprints, mostly of individuals who have served or are serving in the U.S. military or have been or are employed by the federal government. The fingerprints and criminal history information are submitted voluntarily by state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies.
In the age of the Patriot act, it all goes into IAFIS. Oh and sign up for the TSA Pre-Check program and guess what, you're fingerprints go there too, for at least 75 years. Oh and recent supreme court rulings have allowed DNA evidence to be collected in connection with 'serious' crimes. The definition of serious is still nebulous but I know a guy who had to give a mouth swab for a public intoxication arrest.
There's multiple reasons why I object to this kind of data being retained except for the purposes intended and it should have a lifespan suiting the needs, or it shouldn't be collected at all. Unfortunately for all of us in the US, everybody wants to collect data on us and our government is no different. If you're convicted of a felony, yes retain the data indefinitely but shit if you get a parking ticket or non-felony you shouldn't have this crap follow you around for the rest of your life.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
You guys do a lot of good work.
how they protect your privacy
Shouldn't that be, "how they don't protect your privacy"?
It's a good thing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This headline reminds me of the "enter your credit card number here to see if it's been stolen" type of things. I realize that's not what's going on here, but that form asks for a lot, and while much of it is optional, I'm hesitant to touch it.
Biometric markers are not security and should never be used as more than one component of a multifactor approach. Any system created to read and authenticate a biometric identifier can already be tricked by today's technology into accepting either a reproduction of that identifier or a surreptitiously obtained sample of the true identifier. Fingerprints can be lifted and faked; blood or other molecular scans can be fooled by misappropriated material; even iris scans can be forged. It's really not hard to get someone's fingerprint, hair, blood, saliva, iris scan, or similar if you have more than a passing interest. Tomorrow's public technology will make it even simpler for small-time criminals, and heaven only knows what level of planting/forgery law enforcement and intelligence are already capable of.
For many years, when I've objected to biometrics by saying things like "my fingerprint is irrevocable, it isn't like a password where I can just change it once it's compromised," the counter-argument has always been "oh don't worry, no one is actually keeping *scans* of your fingerprints, they're condensed into some mathematical hash." That might be accurate for the fingerprint scanner on your iPhone, but it's bullshit when it comes to the government. The recent OPM compromise has many outlets reporting that federal employees' fingerprints themselves were compromised. Not hashes, but fingerprints that can be reproduced, either ink on paper or the high-res digital version that I'm more familiar with. I'm ready and willing to listen to the government's opinion on how those will be replaced...
Anyone relying on biometrics for security is in for a Bad Time.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
A digital FOIA request can be very different at a city and state level. Some local officials might offer to do an exhaustive digital search and find nothing.
The search term was not correct or the database was limited by design or the use of obscure line items, perfectly repeated spelling mistakes.
A walk in request for a budget related 'look' or 'read' might show where new federal or state 'grants' went locally.
A lot of private sector groups are now offering to provide services that track web 2.0 users with terms like reach, geo, severity, engagement, influencers, violation, notes per account per city, state.
What was once reserved for national or federal efforts is priced at the local gov level ie State Commissions are back as fully funded intelligence organizations per state or city. The funding part is the only or last visible way for citizen journalists to understand what is been used for surveillance locally.
Expect changes in how and who can access to public records in more states.
eg Freedom of information legislation (Florida) is clear but it can vary from state to state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"