FBI Image Databases Growing at an Alarming Rate
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By 2015 the FBI’s facial identification database will store 52 million photos of citizens * Courts forced the FBI to reveal the information to the public.
A new FBI facial recognition database will store 52 million photos of citizens by 2015.
Did you ever break the law? Be Careful! The FBI’s new biometric databases is constantly expanding. The facial recognition branch of that database will store around 52 million photographs by 2015, in comparison to 13.6 million in 2012 and 16 million in 2013.
This information was published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, who recently appealed to a U.S. court, claiming the FBI was ignoring the Freedom of Information Act. Following the appeal the FBI was forced to make more information concerning the facial recognition database available to the public.
According to EFF documents around half of the American states are taking part in this massive project aimed at collecting visual data. The database can process around 55,000 new photographs daily, in addition to conducting tens of thousands of searches for photos. It doesn’t just include criminals, though, and by 2015 it will hold an estimated 4.3 million photos of innocent civilians.
IHLS – Israel Homeland Security
According to the EFF “these days, if you apply for a new job that requires taking your fingerprints, your prints will eventually find their way to the FBI’s database. Until recently the FBI wasn’t attaching photos to these prints, although things have taken a turn for the worse. Employees can now ask for photos as well as fingerprints, with both prints and photos eventually reaching the FBI.”
EFF representatives expressed their concern over the fact that the FBI, in its database, doesn’t separate the regular citizens from the criminals. Another concern is the fact that the origin of several million photographs is unclear. The conclusion is that this huge database might help identify criminals and avoid crimes, but it could also be used to involve innocents in criminal affairs they had nothing to do with.
Source: HLS News Wire
