Activist Post reports that the FBI announced that its nationwide biometric database—a sort of advanced facial recognition system amongst other things—is now live throughout the U.S.
The database, dubbed the Next Generation Identification system or NGI, was first designed to replace the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. As stated in the FBI press release from September 15, 2014, NGI has now expanded to include “new services and capabilities” to increase the FBI’s biometric identification capabilities.
Phase one of NGI introduced enhanced automated fingerprinting and was activated in 2011. The latest announcement stated NGI has “full operational capability” which will eventually grow to include iris scans, facial recognition, and other biometric identifiers.
The billion-dollar program was designed and developed by Lockheed Martin, the American defense technology conglomerate that was pivotal in the development of the unmanned aircraft drones.
The purpose of NGI is to be an “investigative tool that provides an image-searching capability of photographs associated with criminal identities,” states the FBI press release. But several privacy activist groups are concerned because of non-criminal photos being stored in NGI’s database.
A similar concern is whether or not the advanced technology will actually be confined to the U.S.—which has extradition treaties with over 100 countries—or if NGI will traverse its national boundaries.
Thailand is a country often cited as an idyllic hideaway for international fugitives, despite the fact that in the last 30 years only 135 people—or 4.5 people per year—have been extradited from Thailand to the States, resultant of the Thailand-USA Extradition Treaty.
Though the extent of the U.S.’ use of facial recognition overseas is unknown, facial recognition systems have been used at least once already to successfully capture a U.S. fugitive who was living in Nepal, according to Activist Post.
Read the full story from Activist Post here.
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