--- From: "Richard M. Smith" <rmsat_private> To: "'Declan McCullagh'" <declanat_private> Subject: U.S. military building database of terror suspects' fingerprints, faces, voices Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 17:36:11 -0500 Hi Declan, The attached article is not good PR for the commercial biometrics market. I find that many people are skittish about using finger print scanners because they associate finger prints with criminals. Now the US Army is giving the impression that all forms of biometrics are really good for tracking terrorists. Hmm, do I really want to have my iris scanned like a terrorist just so I can get through that passport line quicker? Richard M. Smith http://www.ComputerBytesMan.com ================================================= http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=524&u=/ap/20021029/ap_wo_en_po/us_terror_biometrics_2&printer=1 U.S. military building database of terror suspects' fingerprints, faces, voices 1 hour, 33 minutes ago By JIM KRANE, AP Technology Writer NEW YORK - The United States is compiling digital dossiers of the irises, fingerprints, faces and voices of terrorism suspects and using the information to track their movements and screen foreigners trying to enter the country. Since January, military and intelligence operatives have collected the identifying data on prisoners in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There are also plans to extend the collection process to Iraq in the event of a U.S. invasion. With this project, the U.S. government has taken biometrics - the measuring of human features - well beyond its most common use to date: verifying people's identities before giving them access to computers or secure areas. "We're trying to collect every biometric on every bad guy that we can," said Lt. Col. Kathy De Bolt, deputy director of the Army battle lab at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where the biometric tools being used were developed. "Any place we go into - Iraq or wherever - we're going to start building a dossier on people of interest to intelligence. Even if they get released, we have face and voice clips. When they come into one of our checkpoints, we can say, `You're this bad guy from here.'" ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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