New FBI System IDs People By Voice, Iris, More 151
cultiv8 writes "Under the system, state and local police officers also will eventually use hand-held devices to scan suspects' fingerprints and send the images electronically to the FBI center. 'It's a quick scan to let police officers know if they should let the person go, or take him into custody,' Morris said. In later stages, NGI system also will be expanded to include the analysis of palm prints, handwriting, faces, human irises and voices."
Truly a geek dilemma (Score:2, Interesting)
As a geek, I honestly don't know how I should feel about this.
The technology is cool. The potential for abuse is frightening. This could be wonderful for helping local police capture criminals more quickly who are on the run from another jurisdiction. The "Big Brother" aspect of this having the potential to lead to a database of biometric information on EVERYONE is frightening. Will they take the biometrics gathered when foreigners enter the US and add that to the database automatically?
*sigh*. After weighing the pros and cons, this one comes out with too many points against it. The potential for abuse is too high.
did I read that right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now they are authorized to take your fingerprints if you are arrested. This was the tradeoff made when the whole fingerprinting thing came up in the first place, "you've already been arrested, you temporarily certain rights of privacy when arrested, in the interest of safety of the officers" was the original reason they were allowed to search your person. (and later, your vehicle) Then that was expanded to fingerprinting for the purposes of recordkeeping, and later for lookup in the database to see if you had any outstanding warrants etc. But this was all based on your being arrested and having forfeit certain rights as a result.
So now we're going to continue with the invasion of privacy, but just drop the justification entirely? So a cop can see you walking down the street and looking funny and can pull you aside and print you? If that doesn't say "papers, please!" I don't know what does.
Re:With reservations, this can be a good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Personal experience when hunting for a job.
When interviewing I'd be asked about my *arrest* record at many places (Fortune 100 companies on down), but not about convictions. Since I'm lucky enough to have no record in either department, I passed that test, but asked multiple HR droids why someone arrested but not convicted mattered, and got the response that was stated in my previous post.
Essentially it is used as a filter so the HR people have fewer applications to sort through.