Day: February 4, 2008

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is expected to announce in the next few days a $1 Billion, 10 year contract to help complete a biometric database that will consist of every American’s palm prints, eye scans and even tattoo mapping.

The FBI already has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file. In coming years, the bureau wants to compare palm prints, scars and tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes. The idea is to combine various pieces of biometric information to positively identify a potential suspect. – Article

If you did not think America was a surveillance society before, maybe this wake up call is what you needed. I know a couple of people who had been talking about things like this for a little while now and it certainly does not come as a surprise to me that they are announcing this. Only thing that caught me off guard was that they just came out an announced it, I thought they would have been a little more subtle with things like this. I guess throwing in that it is used to identify dangerous criminals and potential terrorists.

This is always comforting that they already had full access to pretty much do what they wanted with no oversight and now publicly announcing a plan like this just gives them more authority to do what they want. Certainly there are civil liberties group who are speaking out against the issue. “It’s the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Liberty Project.

Only time will tell how big of a Big Brother this will develop in our society but by no means is this a good start.