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Privacy Government Security United States

DHS Will Soon Have Biometric Data On Nearly 260 Million People (qz.com) 40

Posted by BeauHD from the public-service-announcement dept.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expects to have face, fingerprint, and iris scans of at least 259 million people in its biometrics database by 2022, according to a recent presentation from the agency's Office of Procurement Operations reviewed by Quartz. From the report: That's about 40 million more than the agency's 2017 projections, which estimated 220 million unique identities by 2022, according to previous figures cited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based privacy rights nonprofit.

A slide deck, shared with attendees at an Oct. 30 DHS industry day, includes a breakdown of what its systems currently contain, as well as an estimate of what the next few years will bring. The agency is transitioning from a legacy system called IDENT to a cloud-based system (hosted by Amazon Web Services) known as Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology, or HART. The biometrics collection maintained by DHS is the world's second-largest, behind only India's countrywide biometric ID network in size. The traveler data kept by DHS is shared with other U.S. agencies, state and local law enforcement, as well as foreign governments.
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DHS Will Soon Have Biometric Data On Nearly 260 Million People More

DHS Will Soon Have Biometric Data On Nearly 260 Million People

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  • The US is police state (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Treating people like criminals. Guilty until proven innocent.

    • Re:The US is police state (Score:4, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @06:44PM (#59392378)

      Treating people like criminals. Guilty until proven innocent.

      So? There is nothing new about this. 20 years ago, when the Innocence Project began using DNA evidence to review convictions, they found that 10% of the defendants couldn't possibly have committed the crimes they were accused of. That doesn't mean 10% were innocent, it means 10% is the MINIMUM rate of false convictions. The real rate is believed to be much higher.

      Since then the rate of incarceration and the rate of coerced plea deals have gone way up. So it is now "Guilty with no chance to prove innocence".

      So what can you do about it? When you get a flyer from a politician who promises to get "tough on crime" and is endorsed by the police, please vote for someone else.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • So what can you do about it? When you get a flyer from a politician who promises to get "tough on crime" and is endorsed by the police, please vote for someone else.

        What if that someone else also promises to get "tough on crime" and is endorsed by the police?

  • Yeah, that makes me feel good knowing all of that data will be super secure now that it's stored on a public "cloud".

  • How long before the entire system is compromised by open permissions on an S3 bucket?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mitreya ( 579078 )

      How long before the entire system is compromised by open permissions on an S3 bucket?

      What do you mean how long?
      It is probably already compromised on some open bucket or port.

    • it's already in the wrong hands.
    • Given that a major thrust of the effort is to take a somewhat stable system and port it to AWS services using Gov-flavored version of agile run by disinterested offshore contractors, the chances of breach would seem to be north of 100%.
  • Wait until they add your genetic code to that database and provide both government and corporate access to it. The privacy and control risks are truly terrifying. "Sorry, according to the R.I.S.K. database you are not eligible for 'insurance, that job, medical care, to live in that area, get a loan that large, drive that vehicle, vote]".
    • DNA is explicitly listed in the deck, along with voice identification and tattoos. (See slide #20)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Normal nations do that by asking a person to show they have a bank account to cover time in the nation, a reason for entering the nation, are not a criminal, do not have health problems, are not a supporting a banned group, have the needed amount of private insurance to cover any new health problems... do not have health problems..
      Then they are granted permission to enter.. study, visit, travel..
      Why should any normal nation risk the support costs of the failed, sick, criminal citizens of another nation, a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jezwel ( 2451108 )
        There's usually nothing wrong with these systems when they are used only for their intended purpose. Then, like anyone trying to save a dollar, hooking into something already built and adding your required functionality is far easier than building something similar from the ground up.. The result is that the one system becomes more and more capable, with more and more information.

        Still not a problem, until it's used outside intended purposes, which it inevitably will be, simply because of human nature.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Wait for the next question to be not just social media use but months/years of ISP logs too :)
  • Sorry Sir, You cant leave the country. You have not paid your taxes and have an outstanding parking fine. In Victoria, private debt towtruck services can just steal your parked car when an automatic licence place scanner for parking fines sees a numberplate suitable for revenue collection. Australia already has a big database, and if you are on the run from even alledged unpaid debts, expect to be targeted. At least being on AWS is good. The Chinese can bid for the company come the next crash.
  • Government is our friend! It can solve everything -- it HAS everything!

    Overly Attached Government. "I want to know Every Little Thing about you. No, really: EVERYTHING. Come a little closer why don't you? .... No? OK, then *I* will."

    Back in the day (60s) there was a joke about if you hear a man say: "Hi -- I'm here from the Government and I'm here to help you", then you run away screaming.

    I _ALSO_ remember mentioning this exact same thing in the 2009s ,after reading a newspaper article about how

  • "If you use facial recognition for anything, the government has your face!"

    "Wait'll you find out about driver licenses."

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Pretty sure they got mine back in the 1970s when I was a child. My dad was an officer at a bank when kidnapping families of bank employees was a thing. I have a vague recollection of an "event" where our pictures and fingerprints were taken, just in case.

      • Disney parks, every person entering a park has his fingerprint scanned.

  • I, for one, welcome our insect overlords.

    -H. Simpson

  • "Living document" (Score:3)

    by Empiric ( 675968 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @06:47PM (#59392388)

    Amendment IV
    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

    "The database" doesn't count as the "particular place to be searched".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      The loophole is in the word "unreasonable". All you need is a ruling that catching bad people is reasonable.

  • Biometrics “make it possible to confirm the identity of travelers at any point in their travel,” Kevin McAleenan, US president Donald Trump’s recently-departed acting DHS secretary, told congress last year. The criteria used by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, a division of DHS, to screen out specific travelers as suspicious is top secret, but was determined in conjunction with Palantir, the Silicon Valley data-mining firm co-founded by controversial billionaire and ardent

    • Re:The part that bothers me most (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @08:17PM (#59392556) Journal
      Re "travelers"... people who want to enter the USA for some reason. The USA did not face them, make them, demand travel to, via the USA.
      Want to enter, travel, visit, stay in the USA, then part of that is a passport, a reason and not been a criminal, not been part of/supporting a banned group...
      Re "begin their internet travel research"... Many criminals find people with no criminal past and have a "created" passport and rushed/no "travel research".
      The question on arrival in any nation by waiting security is when did you plan your holiday, what did you want to do/see, where are you staying? How much money do you have...
      People doing crime usually have very different internet use patterns than normal people visiting friends/faimly, been on holiday, who have arrived for further education, who know something about the USA and have had a holiday planned for some time, who have the money in a bank to support their holiday...
      Wonder why police and security can detect criminals on arrival? Its their pattern of internet use, their friends, their family, their pattern of getting passport, their paying for the travel, the time spent planning a holiday...
      Nothing looks like normal people in their past internet travel research, social media use.
      Everything looks like someone got a new passport and that someone paid for their US travel for them...
      Did they pack their own clothing as part of a criminal deal or do they have to carry something given to them? New clothing packed in by criminals that is the wrong size? Someone packed everything for them....
      That does not fit with past spending, images on social media and the "work" of the person who now wants to "holiday" in the USA?
      They then totally fail the most easy question of why they are in the USA, what they are doing, when did they start planning to come to the USA....
      They have no contacts in the USA, can't articulate anything they want to do in the USA...
      Thats why the internet travel research is a vital tool per person seeking to enter the USA for US police/gov, security and mil to study before the person enters the USA...
      That face on social media who requested a passport and who now wants to enter the USA quickly who no past interest/connections/not much wealth... who are they, why the sudden and direct interest in the USA... the sudden money to travel...
      Why did their failed/3rd/2nd world nation grant them a passport so quickly? Why do they suddenly have a new bank account with some extra money
      Not from their low wage, the money their extended family put in for them?
      Just days before that "rushed" but now well "planned" travel to the USA?

      Thats why social media matters and why every person entering the USA has their social media considered well before arrival in the USA... its packed with interesting information that's very telling about the person and they many lies they will be telling when asked the most simple of holiday/study/travel/USA related questions...
  • Yeah those billions of passengers â" you included â" who walk in and stand for their the millimeter scan at airports, getting your biometric *tonnage* scanned and stored in some form of fingerprint like data in the databanks of some secretive agency who probably will end up leaving the data exposed in some AWS backup bucket without a password on it... cough cough, what secrecy do you think you have when the only people they donâ(TM)t force through those lines are little kids, seriously effing

  • How about DNA? They are amateur as far as police state without that.

  • Signed, $anyHackerOutThere.

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