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About face: FBI rolls out facial identification system
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
September 11th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
September 11th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged that the human face is the chief indicator of human identity and has initiated a face recognition project that will soon make fingerprint databases old hat. The system will record information about every living American at the cost of $1 billion dollars.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Next Generation Identification, or NGI program will soon be implementing the intelligence database in unidentified locales across the country.The FBI first outlined the project back in 2005, explaining to the Justice Department in an August 2006 document saying this new system will eventually serve as an upgrade to the existing fingerprint program already in place.
"The NGI Program is a compilation of initiatives that will either improve or expand existing biometric identification services," the administrator explained, and "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.
"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."
The U.S. government is now going ahead with linking a database of images and personally identifiable information around the world.
The NGI program utilizes "specialized requirements in the Latent Services, Facial Recognition and Multi-modal Biometrics areas" that "will allow the FBI to establish a terrorist fingerprint identification system that is compatible with other systems; increase the accessibility and number of the IAFIS terrorist fingerprint records; and provide latent palm print search capabilities."
In a 2012 presentation, the agency identified why facial recognition technology needs to be embraced. The FBI says that the technology could be used for "Identifying subjects in public datasets," as well as "conducting automated surveillance at lookout locations" and "tracking subject movements."
NGI is far more than just a database of mug shots with fingerprints. The FBI has admitted that this their intent with the technology surpasses just searching for criminals but includes spectacular surveillance capabilities.
The system was tested on a trial basis in the state of Michigan earlier this year, and has already been cleared for pilot runs in Washington, Florida and North Carolina. The full rollout of the program has been initiated and the FBI expects its intelligence infrastructure to be in place across the United States by 2014.
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