Uncle Sam wants YOUR biometrics

[deathkenli]

England was the pioneer of democracy.
Now the United Kingdom is the most surveilled country on planet Earth.

The U.S. of A is following up quickly too.

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

"If you have nothing to hide, you have everything to fear."

"Innocent until proven guilty."

Next time you join a peaceful protest, look out for tazers!

Just some random thoughts.

 

[gadget_lover]

The list of what is considered "private" by the Court is lengthy and interesting. But as a rule, if something is actively hidden from public knowledge in a reasonable way (such as a letter in an envelope, a telephone call between two parties, a closed car trunk, closed curtains in a person's home), it is protected against government monitoring without probable cause.

Did this change in the last two years? I read a very interesting .gov web site that advised FBI agents (and LEOs in general) about proper search and seizure.

I was amazed that you lose the expectation that something is private when it falls into another's hands, even by theft or fraud. An example given in teh web site: a sealed letter is in a mans pocket. That could be considered private. If the man is mugged, the letter stolen and recovered later by LEOs, the contents can be used against the man in court.

Another example was a person whose house was searched based on the consent of his neighbor. The neighbor had a key for emergency purposes, and therefor was considered in possession of the house.

I always figured that if I write "Private" on an envelope, that should make my expectations clear.

On a related note... An e-mail sent through an ISP may be considered non-privileged since the e-mail is stored on a third party's disk, and therefor not under your control.

This only relates to the subject at hand in so far as the expectation that your biometrics are 'private" may not meet the legal tests for that status.

Daniel

 

[Lightraven]

Not being a lawyer, nor playing one on television, I have to wing it.

The general rule, which is easier to remember than the various specific situations, is that anything you do in public (eating in a restaurant, driving, talking on a cell phone) or leave laying around in public view (like a drug pipe sitting on the front seat of a car) has no reasonable (important qualifier) expectation of privacy.

The envelope question is a bit tricky. If I arrest someone who has clearly stolen a sealed mail envelope (say, a bunch of Social Security checks), I wouldn't be in any hurry to open it. If a US Postal Service Special Agent needs to get into the envelopes for investigation or prosecution of the thief, that's their job, not mine.

If a person is arrested carrying a sealed envelope that I have no reason to think is stolen, I will always open it, which is well within my authority (but different LEOs have different authority). Fourth amendment still applies, but is significantly reduced after arrest. Virtually anything in a arrestee's immediate control is subject to a search to include ripping, breaking, tearing, or cutting to complete the search.

In the house search example, it depends on many factors. If someone is living in an area with the owner's consent (roomate, hotel guest, girlfriend/boyfriend), that person may give consent to search any area the person is allowed to be. If a specific area is locked with no key, that area is likely considered private by the owner, and the Kato Kaelin houseguest would not have authority to give consent to a search of that particular area. If platonic roomates (doesn't include MTV's Real World )share a house or apartment, they can give consent to search their own bedrooms and common areas, but NOT their roomates' bedrooms.

Conversely, a hotel owner cannot ordinarily give consent to search the room of a guest, nor a landlord give consent to search a renter's house/apartment.

Can a neighbor with a key who isn't living at a house give consent (absent any other condition that would justify an entry)? If that is the case, I'm a little surprised, but not shocked. Giving your car keys to someone certainly opens that car up to a consent search--something I deal with more often than the house scenario.

There is also hot pursuit, emergent circumstances, signed search warrants, Terry frisk, search incidental to arrest and continuing crime that legally justify a house/apartment/hotel room search when consent is not forthcoming.

By leaving a fingerprint or DNA somewhere public, you have no reasonable expectation of that print or DNA being private. Anybody could pick it up--and conceivably put it in THEIR database.

 

[gadget_lover]

By leaving a fingerprint or DNA somewhere public, you have no reasonable expectation of that print or DNA being private. Anybody could pick it up--and conceivably put it in THEIR database.

That made me laugh. When I was 8 years old I discovered Sherlock Holmes and became an amateur detective. I made my own fingerprint powder and went around collecting peoples fingerprints from things. I had a full set of prints for my entire family and a few friends. During this few months my room was spotless. I was always wiping things down to ensure I had a clean surface from which to lift prints.

It was no surprise that my older brother complained bitterly to my parents about it. He did NOT want his fingerprints in my files. I could see why. He'd occasionally help himself to my piggy-bank but I was never able to prove it. He stopped raiding it after I got good at lifting prints.

Which puts us back on subject. Sometimes the assurance that you will be caught and successfully prosecuted is enough to deter a person who is tempted to commit a crime. Note I said "tempted" and not "determined". They are two different classes of people.

Daniel

 

[shakeylegs]

Which puts us back on subject. Sometimes the assurance that you will be caught and successfully prosecuted is enough to deter a person who is tempted to commit a crime. Note I said "tempted" and not "determined". They are two different classes of people.

Daniel

This link offers an anti-surveillance perspective addressing many of the issues raised in this thread, including the the idea that surveillance deters crime. While focusing on CCTV surveillance, it is relevant to this discussion and I think you'll find it thought provoking whether you agree in principle or not.
http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/surveillance.php

This Dec 2002 Times article also addresses many of this threads concerns from both sides:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...3A25751C1A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

And here is a short BBC clip about privacy concerns being raised in the UK.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7020000/newsid_7029500/7029553.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1

 

[NA8]

There's a scene in Resident Evil Extinction, where the bad guys throw a switch and "shut down" the heroine via satellite. New meaning to the implant concept.

 

[gadget_lover]

In re: the links about surveillance posted by shakeylegs....

There's a major difference between surveillance and biometrics. The biometrics can pretty much be used only to say ' Yes, that really is George' or 'Nope, that's not George'. It does not allow a person to sit in a dark room and ask a computer "Where is George?"

I will admit that biometrics can be used to track people if used in a more comprehensive system, such as pay by fingerprint or building access by retinal scan. Locating people can already be done by looking at things that are already tracked; credit cards, cell phones, toll road transponders and such, so that's not a major change.

But when it comes to deterring crime, the fact that a camera may be capturing a blurry image of a crime in progress that may be noticed by a bored person who may decide it's worth pursuing.... well that has not shown to slow most folks down.


There is a line between oppression and tracking and identification. I see nothing at all scary about irrefutable identification. I actually like the idea. No need to carry a drivers license or SS card. Fewer worries about Identity Theft. Higher transportation security.... whats not to like?

Daniel

 

[Sub_Umbra]

"Resistance is futile..."

 

[daveman]

...I will admit that biometrics can be used to track people if used in a more comprehensive system, such as pay by fingerprint or building access by retinal scan. Locating people can already be done by looking at things that are already tracked; credit cards, cell phones, toll road transponders and such, so that's not a major change...

If I had ever come across a pile of BS, this would it! If you had the intelligence to type up the above paragraph, as opposed to copying and pasting it here, you would know that credit cards, drivers licenses, id cards, cell phones, toll transponders, or any other peripherals CAN BE REMOVED FROM YOUR PERSON WITHIN SECONDS, BUT YOUR RETINAL PATTERN, FINGERPRINT, GENETIC CODE AND OTHER BIOMETRIC DATA CANNOT!

But I guess that's not a major change?

 

[James S]

If I had ever come across a pile of BS, this would it! If you had the intelligence to type up the above paragraph, as opposed to copying and pasting it here, you would know that credit cards, drivers licenses, id cards, cell phones, toll transponders, or any other peripherals CAN BE REMOVED FROM YOUR PERSON WITHIN SECONDS, BUT YOUR RETINAL PATTERN, FINGERPRINT, GENETIC CODE AND OTHER BIOMETRIC DATA CANNOT!

But I guess that's not a major change?

I think this discussion may be getting out of hand.

You can throw those things away, but if you need to then something much worse than tracking of you is happening. You're basically saying that you need to escape from the system. Either you're a real criminal, or your a falsely accused criminal. In the first case, good luck, in the second the problem is not that they can track you, but that they screwed up and you're not who they are looking for. If you're not currently under scrutiny then you need NOT to be tracked by the systems that are in place to track criminal activity. Which is why we do not want to dismantle these systems, you simply cannot do that, but you could push the use of them into the dark back rooms where it's all "secret" and you have no legal recourse.

So if you're willing to throw away everything that ties you to society which could also be used to track you then good luck to you, enjoy your cabin in the woods. The rest of us will continue to find ways to reform the systems that we have and work to keep the technology in the open and track both the users of it as well as the trackees. If the police or whatever agency can just access this info from anywhere for any reason then we're all in trouble and a cabin in the woods may be the only choice till they come for you on weapons charges. But if the police have to go to a judge to get the permission to do it to you and if the records that they did that are public then the chance for abuse of the system is greatly reduced but not completely eliminated. While you may disagree with a judges decision about allowing cops to tap phones during a real criminal investigation, you cannot argue about the system that lets them do so in general if they can convince a judge of the necessity. NOBODY thinks that they should be allowed to listen in to anything they want, anywhere they want for any reason without any paper trail to show that they are doing it. And that is what we find ourselves approaching if we're not careful here. You can't turn this stuff off, you need to bug your legislators who dont understand this until they realize that even if they dont understand it, that it's important to voters.

 

[Zot]

+1

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

This was said by the guy who is portrayed in the 100 dollar bill...


Pablo

 

[daveman]

...You can throw those things away, but if you need to then something much worse than tracking of you is happening. You're basically saying that you need to escape from the system. Either you're a real criminal, or your a falsely accused criminal. In the first case, good luck, in the second the problem is not that they can track you, but that they screwed up and you're not who they are looking for. If you're not currently under scrutiny then you need NOT to be tracked by the systems that are in place to track criminal activity. Which is why we do not want to dismantle these systems, you simply cannot do that, but you could push the use of them into the dark back rooms where it's all "secret" and you have no legal recourse...

This may come as a shock to you, and all those who are just dying to have their credit card info or entire lives' worth of data implanted onto their forehead or right hand, but some of us don't have to be fugitives (falsely accused or otherwise) to want to stay off some bureaucrat's palm pilot screen; we just value our privacy? Insane, is it not?

 

[gadget_lover]

Having your retina scan on record will not aid in tracking you. Neither will having your finger prints on file. The reson for this is simple; the data is useless for tracking without a way to match it to something.

If I have your retinal pattern, I have no way of knowing where you are until you take 10 seconds to stare into one of the few thousand scanners in use nation wide. Then the scanner has to be networked and it has to submit your scan to me.

The same goes for fingerprints. You leave them behind all day long, yet they are only collected when there is a crime. It's too much hassle (and mess) to lift random prints without a very good reason. Your average gas station does not have a networked fingerprint reader tied to the feds, so there's little danger that one will be busted while pumping gas at their local 7-11.


Now if you are concerned about bing able to assume a fake identity to evade capture, I can see where having biometrics on record may be a disadvantage.
If you want to be able to infiltrate secure areas, the existance of strong authentication would be a bummer too.

As for whether this is BS, well, I've spent a lot of years in computer tech, and I try to keep informed about the physical security field. I have worked with databases and data aquisition. I've never seen any indication that the government could afford ( much less manage ) a system as invasive as some folks worry about. No offense to anyone, but the govenment in general is just too inept to actively track millions of disidents in any meaningful fashion.

It's one thing to have a dosier on me. It's yet another to be able to do anything meaningful with that dosier. By the same token, having my fingerprints on file (for the last 30 years) has not given the feds any particular advantage.

If you thing the feds are all-mighty, think of this; I still have to tell THEM where I am each year so I can get my tax return, despite the fact that they have all the information and proper W4's and W2s and 1099's..... If they can't co-ordinate such nicely organized data how do you expect them to get around to doing something evil with fingerprints?

Sheeesh.


Daniel

 

[gadget_lover]

some of us don't have to be fugitives (falsely accused or otherwise) to want to stay off some bureaucrat's palm pilot screen; we just value our privacy? Insane, is it not?

You do realize that your signature is is a sample of biometric data, right? You do realize that when you sign your paycheck you are not losing privacy, right? When you sign you are simply attesting that you are really you.

The fact that your paycheck is cashed is noted by the bank and your employer, but that is not an invasion of privacy, is it? All it tells the employer is that you have a bank account there, and it tells the bank that you work for your employer.

So where's the problem? I don't see one.


Daniel

 

[jtr1962]

Without bothering to read the entire thread, this doesn't particularly bother me right now. This isn't akin to lojacking every citizen so you know where they are at all times (and possibly what they're doing). I feel government is too big and incompetent to do much with the data they already do have, much less any new data.

Additionally, to throw in a little science fiction which will become scientific fact, the minute human cloning is viable all this biometric data suddenly becomes worthless. Your fingerprints are at a crime scene, or perhaps your DNA or a retinal scan? So what? Good luck to the government proving it was you, and not a clone of you. Farfetched? Perhaps now, but not in 20 or 30 years. And for those who might say that human cloning will probably be made illegal, first off, I doubt it will even in Western countries. Second, making something illegal as we all know doesn't stop it from being done. Third, there will undoubtedly be countries where it's not illegal at all because it would likely be highly profitable. Assuming we ever find a way to transplant a brain from one body to another (I this is inevitable with nanotechnology), then people moving from old bodies into new ones will become a way of life. Your new body may not even necessarily match your old. Even if this is never possible, the abililty to make multiple human beings with the same biometric data will pretty much render it useless. And I think we're not too far from being able to alter biometric data such as fingerprints or even DNA via nanotechnology. Altering DNA doesn't necessarily need to be done for nefarious reasons. It could be to get rid of certain genes which might cause cancer, obesity, premature greying, any of a number of other cosmetic or health reasons.

I think it's interesting that as technology advances things which were formerly considered ironclad proof of a crime no longer are. There was a time when a picture of someone committing a murder might be enough to get them the electric chair. Now that the means to easily manipulate photos has become ubiquitous, those days are over. I would no longer accept a picture, or even a video, as sole proof of guilt for any crime. So it will eventually be with biometric data.

 

[James S]

the problem I see is not necessarily with the technology. The technology is coming whether you want it or not. Some of it will work for a primary purpose like unlocking your car with a fingerprint and some will be used by police, face recognition cameras mounted all over the place like in England. Credit card tracking already exists and has for a long time. The point is that the technology is there. You can certainly opt out of credit card tracking by just not using one. At least for the moment cash is still acceptable most places. But it's going to get more and more difficult.

So instead of opting out of it entirely, it's more important to let the people in charge know that we are concerned about how the data is used. Right now the Credit Card transactions database is not connected to the police database. They can't just scan your license plate as you drive by and know where you had lunch. But this is possible, and you know that the police will want to have this level of integration. Right now they have to ask for the data later and that leaves a paper trail that can show abuse of the system. This is what we need to encourage. When a person is held accountable for their actions publicly and legally then they pay a little more attention to what they are doing. We need not to have this all available all the time to anybody in "law enforcement" that just wants to look you up and see what you're doing. We need to continue to tradition of privacy and needing to ask a judge to allow you to be observed at that level.

It will still get abused and misued, the wire tap laws are abused, but the abuse is not wide spread and you have decent recourse in some circumstances. It may not be perfect, but just turning it all off isn't an option either. If the data is there and the only option you give your government is not to use it at all, they will use it in secret. And that is not acceptable at all.

 

[Rzr800]

"..Some folks prefer to just stay off the radar altogether. No phone, no taxes, etc. I'm not sure that works anymore. It would not take that much extra to run through the tax records to see which addresses don't have a current tax return. Same for phones and driver licenses. "Conspicuous in it's absence" is the term that comes to mind. You'd have to live out of town, off the grid and independent of government resources (roads, buses, hospitals, etc) in order to stay hidden from such a search..."

...or simply in the country all together illegally (how many millions?) which makes any kind of identification system that the government (sadly 'eventually') comes up with; essentially a mute topic.

Seriously, if we allow the debate on this topic to continue for any further length of time without simply sticking the best system that we can possibly build quickly in place (even if the damn thing doesn't work as advertised)...this country will bear consequences far beyond the troubles we had 6 years ago and 100% irreversible in scope.

We are allowing people to get in the way of these kind of programs who are either constantly putting our country down anyways or who have it all figured out that they will crawl into some bunker that they've built until the poop quits hitting the fan.

The problem is and by that time...civil liberties won't mean a hill of beans anyways and not a damn one of them will be willing to step up anywhere or accept the blame for rabidly questioning what was truly needed in 2008 or well before to keep us safe.

 

[IMSabbel]

With all those biometric things, many people forget one thing:
->Real life is not CSI

Once you get _everybody_ fingerprinted, or dna-profiles, _any_ search will have 100s of matches that are "really close".
Yeah, stuff is unique, but the muck you suck out of a dead hookers vagina, or the fingerprint on a gun thats been partially wiped isnt.

The practical result: You are transformed from a citizen to a suspect. Permanently.
Some guy dialing in some stuff on the other end of the country could give you as the closest match, at any time. And the consequences would be nice.

And you would have no chance to ever evade such a situation, because its totally outside your control. There is no "i dont to bad stuff, and thus i am not in the database" card to pull.

Whenever you hear your doorbell, you will _never_ know if its not the cops that want to arrest you because they think you raped little susie in kentucky.

 

[Lightraven]

I'm sure investigators are a little smarter than that. They get the closest match and then check other known facts to see if it is realistic. Heck, I do that now and I'm no investigator. You get a match of a 6 foot 2 inch white guy with white supremacist tattoos from Idaho born in 1972 and you're holding a 5 foot 6 inch Hispanic with no tattoos in his 40s who looks at you confused when you question him about his crimes there. Doesn't take CSI to figure out it is a bad match. Of course, the Hispanic man was arrested for an actual misdemeanor he committed, he just doesn't match the criminal record of the Aryan Nation felon.

Here is the REAL problem--straight from my second level supervisor yesterday at roll call:

We arrested a guy for a trivial crime and cut him loose after printing him and getting a clear result. Thirty minutes later, we get the call that he is wanted for murder. Too late, he's gone. But now, he is in our fingerprint database and will be held, the next time he gets caught. Well, I hope he doesn't murder anybody else before he's arrested again. I mean, my agency is definitely not going to the media and saying, "Guess what we just did yesterday?" So, I'm here to tell you--the risks aren't you being hauled off to prison for crimes you didn't commit, the risks are the possible killer we released will rob or harm you or your family before he gets caught again.

 

[daveman]

Yes, that's the spirit, rather (mistakenly) get everybody than let that ONE get away. While we're trying to improve our legal system's odds of catching the bad guys or reducing crime, why don't we just all commit suicide right now and get it over with? No people, no crime... How about improving the chance of destroying the _____ virus by shooting the patient in the head? If the host dies, the virus will die too . Or stop driving altogether so we won't become one of the statistics every year?

People who tout these gimmicks, whatevery they be, to improve our legal system are forgetting that there have always been ways to improve the "efficiency," "accuracy," of our investigators (how about if we just keep beating the suspect till he confesses, that way we'll have a 100% confession rate all the time :twothumbs), but we are not currently employing those measures because WHAT THEY TAKE AWAY FROM US IN THE PROCESS IS NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN OUR STANDARD OF LIVING. Not a good trade.