FBI's Nationwide Biometric Facial Recognition System Ends Anonymity As We Knew It

Not that we are convinced anyone will really care until they or a close relative runs afoul of the system, but the FBI is deploying a bleeding-edge facial recognition software tracking capability across the US.

According to reports, once the FBI has your faceprint, they can match against their data base and begin tracking. And just in case you are thinking that cosmetic surgery is the answer, the next stages involve DNA analysis and voice identification.

For those who think, oh, it's the government they'll never get it right, there will be cost overruns and the whole thing will be scrapped: newsflash; it is on budget and already 60% deployed.

Privacy advocates are, of course, alarmed. But then they have been in a constant state of alarm for years. And that is not a put-down. It is just a reflection of the relative lack of concern the average citizen has demonstrated for the actual or potential loss of privacy they have experienced. The reason is probably that it is not always apparent this tracking is happening, there is no obvious loss of freedom of movement or action - and it is not costing them anything explicitly.

The announcement is unlikely to spark massive protests from a population more concerned about putting food on the table than whether someone is watching them. Especially as so many invite that attention every day via social networks, YouTube, Twitter, et al. You dont know what you've lost till it's gone, indeed. JL

Michael Kelley reports in Business Insider:

The FBI has begun installing state-of-the-art facial recognition technology across the country as part of an update to the national fingerprint database,

Facial recognition in public is part of the agency's $1 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) program, which will also include iris scans, DNA analysis and voice identification by 2014.

RT reports that as of July 18, 2012, the FBI said the NGI program “is on scope, on schedule, on cost, and 60 percent deployed.”

Reardon notes that the best algorithms can identify someone in a pool of 1.6 million mugshots about 92 percent of the time, even if they aren't looking at the camera. (There are ways to fool them.)

According to a FBI "Facial Recognition Initiatives Presentation" at the 2010 Biometrics Conference, the technology will be used for identifying fugitives, missing persons and unknown persons of interest; tracking subject movements to/from critical events; conducting automated surveillance at lookout locations; identifying subjects in public datasets (e.g. Facebook); and verifying mug shots against National Criminal Information Center (NCIC) records.

The system has privacy advocates very concerned about innocent people ending up in a federal database or being subjected to warrantless surveillance.

“Once someone has your faceprint, they can get your name, they can find your social networking account and they can find and track you in the street, in the stores you visit, the government buildings you enter, and the photos your friends post online.” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) told the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law earlier this year.

The FBI already has facial recognition software installed at DMVs in at least 27 states, so the FBI can potentially match any citizen's with their ID, license or passport photos in real time.

And the system could be easily be integrated with the National Security Agency's domestic spying apparatus, which whistleblower William Binney said can track electronic activities—phone calls, emails, banking and travel records, social media—and map them to collect "all the attributes that any individual has" and build a profile based on that data.

"The combination of face recognition, social networks data and data mining can significantly undermine our current notions and expectations of privacy and anonymity," Carnegie Mellon University Professor Alessandro Acquisti told the subcommittee.