Biometric Big Brother

by Fuzzyone

Documents recently released as part of  Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights  show that the the FBI is engaged in a massive effort to collect biometric data on essentially everyone.  This is part of The FBI's "Next Generation Identification" Program (NGI):

NGI is a massive database program that collects and stores personal identifying information such as fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, scars, marks, tattoos, facial characteristics, and voice recognition. Data can be collected not only from arrested individuals, but also from latent prints (fingerprints left behind at a crime scene or anywhere else) or through handheld “FBI Mobile” biometric scanning devices. Worse than the FBI accessing all your personal data, when NGI becomes fully operational in 2014, other federal agencies will gain access to the bio-data without your knowledge or consent.

There is more of that here and its pretty scary.  There is really no limit to the amount of data that can be collected or how it can be shared.

What I find really disturbing is that there has been, as far as I could tell, no media attention to this information.  Perhaps in the post-Patriot-Act world this sort of thing is just no longer news. (I learned of it via the invaluable Talk Left.)  It should be news and we should all be concerned by the extent to which this kind of date is being collected with no regard for privacy or for the potential consequences.