(Via The Verge) Without any type of permission, the FBI, US Customs, and some local law enforcement agencies have been creating a massive database of iris scans; over 400,000 of them. The Feds have gotten around the privacy and civil rights issues by maintaining thing that this is just a pilot program in order to test the technologies. The Feds are going to have to make an impact statement on how this data is actually going to be used and whether or not they should have the right to collect it.
According to Breitbart the the FBI have gone on and started another database for facile recognition technologies. It involves over 411 million photos, and less then 10% of these pictures are of criminals. Which means that the FBI has stockpiled biometric data on roughly 380 million innocent citizens with out anyone's consent. In fact both of these programs were started without any senatorial or congressional oversight; they just up and did it themselves. There is absolutely no consent!
Below, I have added a link for the page on the FBI's site. Its called NGI - Next Generation Identification.
However the FBI is not the only one who is collecting this type of data without permission. (Via Top Class Actions) Snapchat is the defendant in a class action lawsuit, whereas they are being sued for collecting biometric facial recognition data from its users. It has not been revealed how many individuals data Snapchat had stored, but the suit seeks between $1,000 to $5,000 for every infringement... with Snapchat being worth an estimated 20 billion right now, I think they will survive.
But how many of these databases are out there lurking in some multinational's servers? (Via International Business Times) Enter project Abacus: Google themselves are trying to roll out biometric recognition and do away with old fashion passwords. Abacus is designed to operate on a trust score that is your vocal tone, speech apttern and GPS location all wrapped up into one. The system is supposed to be 10 times safer then a fingerprint and it will probably look very sexy and stylish too.
But back to fingerprints... (Via NBC) apparently 5.6 million were stolen from the US Governments Office of Personnel Management. The US blames the Chinese for this... but the US loves to blame China for weak cyber security fiasco's. But apparently, China just fingerprinted every US Government employee...
The point here is that all of this data and technology is clearly at risk of falling into the hands of criminals or authoritarian government regimes. In my day people believed that the government should be very limited in its abilities to collect information on people because it was a power that could only be used against them (I guess I'm old). And of course, once data like this is owned by a private corporation, it can be sold (or stolen) as the valuable commodity to any buyer.
Sources:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/06/21/fbi-facial-recognition-database-ten-times-larger-promised-90-non-criminals/
https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/fingerprints-and-other-biometrics/ngi
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/opm-5-6-million-fingerprints-not-1-1-million-were-n432281
https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/336020-snapchat-class-actions-says-facial-recgonition-techology-illegal/
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/12/12148044/fbi-iris-pilot-program-ngi-biometric-database-aclu-privacy-act