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Smile for the US Secret Service

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-just-looovve-nat-dbs dept.

Judg3 writes "Apparently the United States federal government began a plan in 1997 to start a national photographic database, digitizing driver's license photos among other things. More details are availible online. " It's being test piloted in 3 states currently, while kudos goes to Electronic Privacy Information Center for uncovering the information about this program. As would be expected the bogeymen are "illegal immigrants and terrorists".

1 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Alternate theories ... by jabber · · Score: 5

    The real reason for this, and other spooky things that have gone on lately is this (IMHO).

    Job Security

    Since the fall of the "evil empire" we have had lots of essoterically skilled people with nothing better to do. The government can't exactly have a layoff of people with these skills, since there are other countries - some of them adjacent to Kuwait and Iran, that would be willing to pay a lot of money for such skills.

    So classifying, qualifying, quantifying and cataloguing the American public is the NSA/CIA/FBI/etc way of keeping their staff gainfully occupied with busywork. And as a side effect, the residual 'kill-a-commie' directors get another means of making a power grab later.

    --

    -- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.