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June 18, 2013

Report: Law Enforcement Mining State Photo-ID Databases to Identify People 
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The Washington Post has revealed the faces of more than 120 million
people are being stored in massive state databases that are used by law
enforcement to identify people deemed relevant to investigations. The
databases were initially created to prevent driver's license fraud, but
also contain photos of millions who have sought non-driver state IDs.
More than half of U.S. states allow federal or local law enforcement to
comb through or request searches of the databases in order to identify
suspects or even innocent bystanders by matching photos against images
from surveillance footage or social media. The most commonly used facial
recognition programs were honed in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify
insurgents, but are now being used domestically with few legal
restrictions. The Post reported: "As the databases grow larger and
increasingly connected across jurisdictional boundaries, critics warn
that authorities are developing what amounts to a national
identification system — based on the distinct geography of each
human face."

 

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