If you thought Homeland Security checkpoints were intrusive, just wait until they start getting in your face. An oped in the
New York Times:
the Department of Homeland Security
is making considerable progress on a computerized tool called the
Biometric Optical Surveillance System. The system, if completed, will
use video cameras to scan people in public (or will be fed images of
people from other sources) and then identify individuals by their faces,
presumably by cross-referencing databases of driver’s license photos,
mug shots or other facial images cataloged by name . . .
At the moment, there is little to no regulation or legal oversight of
technologies like the Biometric Optical Surveillance System. We need to
implement safeguards to protect our civil liberties — in particular, our
expectation of some degree of anonymity in public.
The Department of Homeland Security is not the only agency developing facial-surveillance capacities. The Federal Bureau of Investigation
has spent more than $1 billion on its Next Generation Identification
program, which includes facial-recognition technology. This technology
is expected to be deployed as early as next year and to contain at least
12 million searchable photos.
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