Uncle Sam wants YOUR biometrics

shakeylegs

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Haven't heard much discussion of this and I'm wondering how you feel about the FBI's biometric's project. Would you feel safer? Would this reduce crime or terrorism? Given the ever increasing collection of personal information by industry and government, I must admit it makes me uneasy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122102544_pf.html

While I can see the value to law enforcement, the potential for abuse seems enormous, especially in the unlikely event we find ourselves with leaders who willingly lie, abuse their official powers, and show disdain for the constitution.

BTW, it does not appear to be limited to persons in the US.
 

daveman

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Whatever can be accessed by men can also be hacked by men. No, it will not be safe, whoever needs to tamper and forge a data will still find a way to do so, as they have with driver license, passports, state, national ids all over the world.
 

Lightraven

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I've done government investigations using all types of authority and gadgets.

I can offer the following:

The government has power and authority which can be used as it was intended by the people for the people, or used for other purposes which could be categorized as misuse. There are some safeguards to prevent agency and individual misuse of information--audits, investigations, information "walls," and need-to-know policies, termination of employment and possible fines and prison.

Consider the fate of Richard Nixon and his cronies like G. Gordon Liddy (ex-FBI) who were illegally gathering information on political rivals. Nixon had to use black bag guys like Liddy and his Cuban spies to do the job because the FBI (including the 'Deep Throat' agent) or CIA would have told him to buzz off. If the President of the U.S. doesn't have the juice to get illegal information, I doubt any lesser bureaucrat does.

Given the need to protect us from terrorists and criminals, collecting identifying information (and associated arrival/departure information from the U.S.) seems worthwhile.
 

Dances with Flashlight

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Very interesting issue. I wonder whether biometric profiling is as potentially abusive as racial or ethnic profiling; whether it is likely to be a better tool to protect the public than racial or ethnic profiling; and whether the data intensive character of biometric profiling is worth its cost.
 

gadget_lover

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I only wish that they would not waste money that way. I'm not worried about the use of the information. The fairy tale "face recognition programs" seen on TV just don't work well when faced with huge databases to search through. Even doing a simple fingerprint search takes a huge a amount of time unlike the 10 minute searches on of the omniscient 'CODIS" on CSI.

The false positive rate of face recognition programs trialled in airports had a horrendous false positive rate. There are not enough TSA agents to check them all out.

I think the homeland security folks need to stop watching TV and start reading scientific journals.

Daniel
 

Lightraven

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Fingerprint analysis time depends on many factors. Our main system checks a few of the biggest print databases in the U.S., possibly the world. It takes about five minutes from the time you click 'submit.'

Checking a secondary database requires a more lengthy, semi-computerized, procedure that takes about 15 minutes if the analyst wasn't doing anything, but typically takes 2-4 hours due to backlog of prints to analyze. This procedure is only done to check suspects who seem worthy of additional investment in time.

A tertiary check on non-standard (for us) databases could be run in rare cases to look for terrorists, fugitives from foreign countries, serial killers and other exotic situations.

These systems are the most valuable law enforcement tool in use, in my opinion. They have flagged murderers, terrorists, rapists and child molesters and wanted fugitives that were arrested for very minor crimes that otherwise would not get any punishment.

Edit to add: When I say fingerprint checks, I mean a person's fingers being scanned (living or dead), not latent prints lifted from an object which may be incomplete or hard to read.
 
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LightInTheWallet

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Weren't the events of 9/11 committed by foreign nationals with legitimately obtained travel documentation? I dont think having my DNA or Al Sharptons thumbprints in a database, will ever prevent determined evildoers from causing harm within the U.S. I do believe it would make many people think that they are being afforded a high level of safety from their Gov't. Ever wonder how they open boxes in the magazine kiosks inside the TSA secure area? I do, and Aunt Molly's facial features have nothing to do with it. Not trying to be a troublemaker but I am concerned about my nations security measures.
 

Lightfantastic

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Any database can and will be compromised. Any information can and will be stolen. Any security can and will be bypassed. Big Brother is notoriously inept when it comes to security. The problem is that you can't stop it. All the TSA and other security junk is just that, window dressing to placate the masses.
 

djblank87

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Interesting topic and discussion so far. Anything these days can and will be hacked by others. With that said, it is not just government that gets hacked but just about anything that is on the internet gets hacked from time to time. Nobody's perfect.

If the FBI wants to collect more information on the people within the CONUS or overseas I do not have a problem with that. If they were to have a detailed list of my tattoo's, scars, eye & hair color, height, weight, hand and palm print, and able to do a retina scan on me to rule me out of something that I'm being accused of then that is a great thing.

Now of course the hacked part comes into play and if someone got into the system and changed people identifying marks then yes we would have a problem. But keeping a record of these things on paper and as well in a computer database provides a layer of checks and balances that should be suitable for most.

Of course nothing that is done by the goverment is always going to be liked let alone excepted by the masses or both sides of the table. But with the right set of checks and balances put into place and an in depth look at how these system would work, (more than this article) it could be a good thing.
 

KC2IXE

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...snip...

The false positive rate of face recognition programs trialled in airports had a horrendous false positive rate. ...snip...

Where I work (one of the major TV networks) we would LOVE to have accurate face recognition - and we test them all, regularly. Not very good.

We would LOVE to be able to take all the raw news footage, play it back into a face recognition system, and have even random people IDed as say "random person 12687453". 6 months later, "random person 12687453" turns out to be say, Monica Lewinsky (picture this is 10 years ago) - we would have loved to be able to say "give us every video tape with random person 12687453 in it"

It's not there yet - and we don't need the real time ability that say the TSA needs (but we do have millions of videotapes - yes folks, millions)
 

LightInTheWallet

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It's probably unpleasant to have your Paypal account hacked. Imagine how unpleasant life would be if your Fingerprint info was hacked.:party::paypal::shakehead:shakehead:shakehead
 

Lightraven

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The government and companies make it way too easy for crooks to steal identities using names, social security numbers and birth dates.

By using a fingerprint scan, nobody is going to get a credit card in your name and rack up huge balances and leave you to deal with the mess. You won't have 6 illegal aliens working in a chicken deboning plant in Iowa using your social security number with the IRS leaning on you for the 'unpaid taxes.'

Crooks already have it made for identity theft--all they need is a few pieces of information. It could only get much harder by requiring a fingerprint scan.
 

djblank87

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The government and companies make it way too easy for crooks to steal identities using names, social security numbers and birth dates.

By using a fingerprint scan, nobody is going to get a credit card in your name and rack up huge balances and leave you to deal with the mess. You won't have 6 illegal aliens working in a chicken deboning plant in Iowa using your social security number with the IRS leaning on you for the 'unpaid taxes.'

Crooks already have it made for identity theft--all they need is a few pieces of information. It could only get much harder by requiring a fingerprint scan.

Agreed and very well said.
 

gadget_lover

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Fingerprint analysis time depends on many factors. Our main system checks a few of the biggest print databases in the U.S., possibly the world. It takes about five minutes from the time you click 'submit.'

Checking a secondary database requires a more lengthy, semi-computerized, procedure that takes about 15 minutes if the analyst wasn't doing anything, but typically takes 2-4 hours due to backlog of prints to analyze. This procedure is only done to check suspects who seem worthy of additional investment in time.

A tertiary check on non-standard (for us) databases could be run in rare cases to look for terrorists, fugitives from foreign countries, serial killers and other exotic situations.

OK, I'm impressed. The last article I read (a couple years back) had a check of a single database taking a week from the time the request was submitted to the time the results were given back to the requester.

How many prints are in the system that you mentioned?

It sounds like your situation is one where you have the person available. Do you narrow the search by age, sex and race to speed it up, or is that a full search of every print?

Thanks for the post.

Daniel
 

PEU

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Given the need to protect us from terrorists and criminals, collecting identifying information (and associated arrival/departure information from the U.S.) seems worthwhile.

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
 

James S

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there is no harm in giving law enforcement the tools to do their job. The harm comes in allowing them to do it in secret. As long as the audit process of who accessed what for what reason is public information, than the information can be used legally and openly. As soon as you add in that the database can be searched for "secret" reasons, then there will be abuse because the use is no longer transparent to the auditing agencies. The problems that we're having with this now days is entirely because we know they will abuse the systems because they don't need to account for their use of it. It's all secret and need to know.

I WANT the police to be able to wire tap the terrorist suspects, I want the police to be able to run fingerprints when they have a suspect. I do not when they to be able to datamine my information as I drive past them just on a whim. In the past auditing of these systems has worked very well. The CIA and the FBI do tons of auditing. If you run info on someone you better know darned well why and be able to justify it to the auditors later. As soon as you remove that step then you're in trouble.

This doesn't address the problems with hacking though. Given these bank people that just carry CD's burned with everybody's SS#'s unencrypted and just loose them out in public, how can you trust those people to maintain any kind of system. Again, with public auditing and scrutiny of the procedures in place to protect our data and privacy. Someone needs to be responsible not only to their superior but to a public, separate auditing agency that will come in and evaluate all the stupid things that they do publicly and as page 1 news. There is no security in keeping the fact that my data is taped to the underside of your desk drawer. As much of the system used should be public as possible. There is no security in obscurity. Does brinks just deliver millions in cash in a regular honda thinking that nobody will notice? No, the advertise the safety of their big armored trucks. No secrets, real security.
 

Lightraven

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Essential liberty and not having to interact with a government are two completely different things. Essential liberties were enumerated in the Bill of Rights so there would be no argument that speech, religion, arms, search and seizure, compelled testimony, legal representation, cruel and unusual punishment, quartering of troops, and later, equal treatment, were considered the essentials.

There is no freedom to enter or leave the U.S. unidentified. It may surprise some people to learn there is no freedom to leave the U.S. at all and the fourth amendment doesn't apply to anybody entering or leaving the U.S. A U.S. citizen has greater rights in the U.S. than a non-citizen, so identification of each is necessary to establish who gets which rights. Likewise, someone on a fourth waiver, such as a parolee, must be identified to establish his lack of 4th amendment rights. Certain persons are prohibited from exercising their 2nd amendment rights, and must be identified. This is all very obvious to generations of Supreme Court justices.

The main fingerprint databases I use contain an aggregate of millions of persons. The supplemental databases have millions more. The technology is pretty new, and I doubt most law enforcement agencies have it. A computer does the analysis, checking only the fingerprints, not any biographical data, so lying by arrestees or data entry errors by the processing officer are irrelevant to getting a match. Missing fingers and damaged finger pads are also not a hindrance, as long as some fingers have legible prints.
 

LightInTheWallet

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Essential liberty and not having to interact with a government are two completely different things. Essential liberties were enumerated in the Bill of Rights so there would be no argument that speech, religion, arms, search and seizure, compelled testimony, legal representation, cruel and unusual punishment, quartering of troops, and later, equal treatment, were considered the essentials.

There is no freedom to enter or leave the U.S. unidentified. It may surprise some people to learn there is no freedom to leave the U.S. at all and the fourth amendment doesn't apply to anybody entering or leaving the U.S. A U.S. citizen has greater rights in the U.S. than a non-citizen, so identification of each is necessary to establish who gets which rights. Likewise, someone on a fourth waiver, such as a parolee, must be identified to establish his lack of 4th amendment rights. Certain persons are prohibited from exercising their 2nd amendment rights, and must be identified. This is all very obvious to generations of Supreme Court justices.

The main fingerprint databases I use contain an aggregate of millions of persons. The supplemental databases have millions more. The technology is pretty new, and I doubt most law enforcement agencies have it. A computer does the analysis, checking only the fingerprints, not any biographical data, so lying by arrestees or data entry errors by the processing officer are irrelevant to getting a match. Missing fingers and damaged finger pads are also not a hindrance, as long as some fingers have legible prints.
What would happen if a hacker/criminal decided to change your print data in order to succeed at a criminal venture? Your " Last resort " option will have been compromised in a very substantial way. Name a public/private/gov accessible database that has never been hacked/compromised by bad sorts of folks and I will drop my entire arguement on the subject. ( remember the POTUSA still has launch codes for certain weapons in an unaccessible " Football " Briefcase among other security precautions.:popcorn:
 

daveman

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Sometimes I can't believe what this country has come to. We used to laugh at other undemocratic systems and deride them as backwards, stupid, and even unholy.
Look at us now, turning into the very sci-fi nazi nightmare that was the banal conversation of teenage geeks in the back in the 70s.
 

Sub_Umbra

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Aside from the obvious abuse issue, the problem with biometrics is that it's all so new and so easy to get wrong. Some will probably remember a couple years ago when Tsutomu Matsumoto, a Japanese cryptographer, made fake fingers from Gummy Bear gel that fooled almost all of the fingerprint scanners being used by the government. The problem is not that fooling the machines was doable -- the problem was/is that an amateur could do it with cheap materials obtained anywhere and the government was completely blindsided by the weaknesses in those devices. I believe that the scanners are still in use but with an armed guard by each one.

I would try to hold on to my biometric data as long as I could. If one of my passphrases is compromised I can change it easily enough. What do I do when my biometric fingerprint signature file is hacked, stolen or sold? That's it for my prints.

All of this unproved hardware is being sold to them with promises of performance and security and they're putting real data into these systems -- without really having much experience and no track record to stand on. I'd rather be the last entered into the system than the first.

Biometrics in everyday commerce would even be much worse, if that could be possible. I'll muddle through with cash until I'm dragged kicking and screaming into the future -- or present, err...whatever. :D
 
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