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FBI begins installation of $1 billion face recognition system across America
Birthmarks, be damned: the FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reached a milestone in the development of their Next Generation Identification (NGI) program and is now implementing the intelligence database in unidentified locales across the country, New Scientist reports in an article this week. The FBI first outlined the project back in 2005, explaining to the Justice Department in an August 2006 document (.pdf) that their new system will eventually serve as an upgrade to the current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America .
“The NGI Program is a compilation of initiatives that will either improve or expand existing biometric identification services,” its administrator explained to the Department of Justice at the time, adding that the project, “will accommodate increased information processing and sharing demands in support of anti-terrorism.”
“The NGI Program Office mission is to reduce terrorist and criminal activities by improving and expanding biometric identification and criminal history information services through research, evaluation and implementation of advanced technology within the IAFIS environment.”
The agency insists, “As a result of the NGI initiatives, the FBI will be able to provide services to enhance interoperability between stakeholders at all levels of government, including local, state, federal, and international partners.” In doing as such, though, the government is now going ahead with linking a database of images and personally identifiable information of anyone in their records with departments around the world thanks to technology that makes fingerprint tracking seem like kids’ stuff.
I Luv Bacon
September 9th, 2012
Coming soon, the faces of Iotw.
So much for the ugly mosaic.
So sorry, nice try Admin Girl!
Boobie the Rocket Dog
September 9th, 2012
… and the DemocRATs will STILL say it’s RACIST.
Xavier
September 9th, 2012
1 billion dollars is so low it’s laughable. Try 25 billion, to start. Here’s another article with a little wider range on privacy concerns:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/262044/how_the_feds_are_tracking_us.html
kvn
September 9th, 2012
Xavier, have yet to find a reason why FBI had iOS IDs and passwords. Coming soon to Microsoft in Windows 8, with a Windows Store and its own proprietary security software. Windows 8 is iOS.
Edith McCrotch
September 9th, 2012
Yes Boobie, racist indeed because the (NGI) program is code word for a mixed up NIG.
Also, the program was created by a white man, so a lot of black people will be held in custody because the program recognizes that they all look the same to it.
IronyCurtain
September 9th, 2012
Just don’t dare ask for ID at the voting booth.
old_oaks
September 9th, 2012
Yup! My brother and I were driving down the interstate the other day, we each had a fresh 24oz Miller Lite.
We don’t normally drink in the car, but had been working all day, had an hour+ drive and needed gas. The gas stations just happen to sell 24oz beers, AND THEY ARE CHEAPER THAN A 20oz SODA!!!
So we’re slugging down these huge cans of beer on an open stretch, finishing them off quickly so they wouldn’t get warm, it occurred to me… Wouldn’t that be the funniest picture to see, both of us in the windshield, clearly visible, just slamming beers!
It will happen one day and I gotta wonder what exactly the drone operator will think when he first sees two 24oz beer heads in a car!
John F.
September 9th, 2012
But, it’s still too costly and difficult for the government to build a border fence. Uh-huh.
Xavier
September 9th, 2012
Some people think we’re going to get bio-chips – and we may – but right now it’s not necessary because many people, especially the young, carry GPS traceable cellphones and use social media to document every aspect of their lives, including crimes and ‘questionable activity’. They’re weaving their own nooses and giggling about it while Big Brother records everything. Combine the phone with an RFID chip in your car, put a sensor at every stoplight, toll booth, and mileage marker on the highway, and they’ll know where you are 95% of the time, or more.
BFH, I was going to email you but I’ll say it here: Politico and Hot Air [experimental now] have both gone to a Facebook commenting system. Please please please don’t do that to iOTW.
Admiral Ackbar’s famous line: “It’s a trap!”
MADJACK
September 9th, 2012
New World Order, Judge Dredd, Big Brother, 1984!
What’s next? Tattoos of the number 666 on our foreheads?
Claudia
September 9th, 2012
@IronyCurtain, I had the same thought. But maybe they would use it to ensure the proper person is voting…nahhhhh.
Dr. Tar
September 9th, 2012
Of course TSA won’t be given access to the system either, so they’ll still have to figure out what religion a person is using the hands on method.
ICE also won’t be allowed to use the system. So the same illegal will be able to cross and recross the border, drive, work and commit crimes without worrying of being I.D. and sent back to their own stink hole nation.
But $1.00 for donuts every gun owner in the nation will be put in the face recognition system.
Serious Putty
September 9th, 2012
Shit!… I just had all mt fingerprints surgically removed!
I'm Your Huckleberry
September 9th, 2012
meanwhile the muzzies run around in their ‘bee-keeper’ suits, so this won’t work…and IF they are so damn worried about WHO’s in this country…how about ..,CLOSE THE Effen southern border…
just another distraction to keep us afraid…
Wyatt, Insensitive Progressive Jerk
September 9th, 2012
I suspect that in the not-distant-future, our forays into a Big Brother society will, due to political correctness, resemble the society in Idiocracy. The FBI can devise a NGI program to keep track of terrorists and criminals, but our politically correct activists will not allow the FBI to either put devices where terrorists and criminals are or prevent the use of any such information gathered on the grounds of unlawful profiling.
As a result, Chicago’s south side will continue to be a war zone, much of L.A. will continue to be a gang infested no-man’s land, terrorists will continue to find sanctuary in Muslim sanctuaries, and illegals will continue to freely cross our borders.
However, those ladies who belong to the Holy Cross Women’s Auxillary Donations Circle in Kokomo, Indiana had better be careful – Big Brother is watching them.
Bob M.
September 9th, 2012
Where’s the nearest camera? I wanna give ‘em a good closeup, of my large, white, hairy ass!
>:-(
scr_north
September 9th, 2012
Great, I can see in the not to distant future passing through an airport and being tasered a few few times, them tackled, cavity searched, cuffed up and sent to a TSA security cell because the software had a little glitch.
We give these government hacks (and their political leaders) permission to create these programs because of weak punishment laws. Frankly, there would be a lot fewer terrorists if when they were caught, given a trial and executed immediatly. There will always be terrorists of some stripe from PETA to Al Quaida but the number of them and the ones willing to join will diminish rapidly if real justice is applied. Instead we just let the governments chip away at our freedoms in the name of “public safety”. Frankly I wonder whether the TSA has ever actualy stopped a armed terrorist before he boarded a plan or is the only thing they’ve done is cow and frighten the public.
Mark Zist
September 9th, 2012
Sooo..no need for TSA anymore?
jwm
September 9th, 2012
Well, I for one feel much more secure knowing that the government will record my face with nothing but my best interests in mind. It’s for our own good, after all.
JWM
ingvard
September 9th, 2012
is google/facebook allready ckeckin our mugs?
MaryfromMarin
September 9th, 2012
@Xavier–
Our local paper, the Marin IJ, switchhed over to that FaceBook commenting system some time back. Ticked me off. I do not do FaceBook (would happen only over my dead body) and now I am disenfranchised from commenting on newspaper articles.
Do you ever get the feeling that you are being herded?
BFH–I agree with @Xavier. NO FaceBook commenting system here, please!!
tripseven
September 9th, 2012
I was wondering why all laptops have webcams now…
tripseven
September 9th, 2012
“BFH, I was going to email you but I’ll say it here: Politico and Hot Air [experimental now] have both gone to a Facebook commenting system. Please please please don’t do that to iOTW.”
+1
Mountain Dog
September 9th, 2012
Remember the fingerprinting campaigns in schools they told us was just in case a kid got lost, so they could find them? Watch them pull the same crap with this. And they won’t stop there. Every where you go.
We all knew it was coming. The complete Police States of America.
Benson II
September 9th, 2012
And we thought the IRS was bad.
It’s time to say no people. I mean it’s really time to say NO!!!!!
Absolute muddjuice
September 9th, 2012
Anyone ever watch “Person of Interest”? Kinda similar, in a less heroic way of course……
Roscoe P. Soultrane
September 9th, 2012
Forever Bothering Individuals: We’re protecting and serving the shit out of you – whether you want it or not.
Anonymous
September 9th, 2012
Hey, if this software is really competent at recognizing faces then maybe it will conclusively identify the undocumented idiot that came from a backward village in Kenya.
The Doktor
September 10th, 2012
I say we all become make-up artists and fuck with ‘em.