Hey Ohio Drivers, Welcome to the Police Lineup!

Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles

The Electronic Privacy Information Center is concerned about inadequate privacy safeguards in the Department of Homeland Security's facial recognition program. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the FBI to find out just how reliable matches made by such systems are. But state after state is adding its digitized driver's license photos to the database, to compare to mug shots and other photographic evidence of doers of dirty deeds. Now you can count Ohio drivers among those participating in a permanent police lineup, forever one search away from being connected to a liquor store holdup.

Reports the Columbus Dispatch:

Catching criminals and protecting privacy clashed as Attorney General Mike DeWine revealed yesterday that his office has been using facial-recognition software since June 6 to match driver's license photos with police mug shots.

DeWine said not adopting such an important new law-enforcement technology would be "dereliction of duty" on his part. …

Since June 6, the Bureau of Criminal Investigation in London, a branch of DeWine's office, has done 2,677 facial-recognition checks based on information submitted by law-enforcement agencies statewide. No information was available about the results.

How reliable such matches are isn't clear, which is why the EFF launched its lawsuit last month. Driver's license photos, while not necessarily our favorite portraits, are at least still shots taken face-on. But there's no easy way to know the quality of the images to which they're compared — or the general rate of false matches.

DeWine says he'll create a commission to develop protocols for using facial recognition technology, now that he's been caught quietly running the state's drivers through perp walks. He also says the database will be used only for law-enforcement investigations, with misuse a fifth-degree felony.

Whew. That should stop public employees from abusing their access to handy treasure troves of personal information.

Even before Ohio joined the fun, roughly 120 million of us had already been added to the national lineup.

Comments

[SQRLSY One]

(GAWD = Government Almighty's Wrath Delivers, and
SHAMM = Statist Heaven Above Mere Mortals)
Our GAWD, Who dwells in SHAMM,
Hallowed be Thy Name;
Thy Taxes come in,
Thy Bennies go out,
All across the land,
Powered by Thy Wrath.
Give us more bread and circuses,
More military crusades,
And more stimulus funds.
Keep us safe from earpoppers
And lung flutes. Lead us not into
Disobedience, but shelter us through
Your Nannies. Forgive us
When we are politically incorrect.
For Yours is the Power and the Glory
of the Pyramind Scheme, Forever and Ever,
Amen!
(This Worship Session brought to you by the Church of Scienfoology; see http://www.churchofsqrls.com/ )

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Now you can count Ohio drivers among those participating in a permanent police lineup, forever one search away from being connected to a liquor store holdup.

I want people from the Ohio state govt to be my pall bearers, so they can let me down one last time.

[Almanian!]

-6 feet

[Episiarch]

EPIC is absolutely right to try and force a reveal of the mismatch rate. This exactly the kind of shit where the cops will do something like "this dude matched; let's just go arrest him and we're done". And now they have a vested interest in railroading you. Fingerprints have the same problem except that as far as I know, fingerprint matching is a very mature science and rarely if ever produces mismatches.

This will be just another way for people to accidentally get swept up in the machine even though they did nothing. I said something in the prior thread about just keeping your head down and staying off the radar, except how do you stay off the radar if you've been mismatched, Mr. Archibald Buttle?

[Generic Stranger]

There are a lot of mismatches of fingerprints, mostly due to the use of a low similarity threshold and bias on behalf of the person who is doing the comparisons. Remember that Portland lawyer who was misidentified as one of the Madrid bombers? That happened because of mismatched fingerprints.

[Dweebston]

accidentally get swept up in the machine even though they did nothing.

I'm sure they've done something . Nobody's truly innocent.

[SomeGuy]

You are bound to break one of the tens fo thousands of the laws....if you are per chance the second coming of Jesus then they can just make some shit up to crucify you since there is no way to know where the evidence came from these days since making a fake trail is now legal -_-

[Cascadian Ephor Xenocles]

The future will be like that Star Trek episode with the computer-simulated war. The computer says you knocked over the liquor store, report to jail for processing.

[Fist of Etiquette]

What's a fifth degree felony buy you as a state employee?

[Almanian!]

Wow! there's a state that just knows where its at! LOL

http://www.fuckohio.com/derp

[Rich]

I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening?

Burqas.

[?J?? de ?guila]

I used to think that Muslim woman in Florida was nuts to want to have her Drivers License photo taken in a Burqa, but now --- let's dooo it! I want my own electronic Burqa!

[BuSab Agent]

Having actually worn a burqa, here are my observations.
1) You don't actually have to wear anything under it. It's very racy to be buck naked under there (and cool it's like your own personal shade tent).
2)You can conceal carry a legal length shotgun.
3)If you're wearing a burqa in a place where everyone wears them, you have functional anonymity in public. Take that no reasonable expectation of privacy brigade!

[Some Chick from OH]

Sold! That is, if there's some religiously-liberal branch of Islam that would accommodate my agnosticism and only require the burqa part-time - like whenever I feel like it or, by sheer coincidence, on that exact day that I have to go get my license renewed.

[Cdr Lytton]

3)If you're wearing a burqa in a place where everyone wears them, you have functional anonymity in public. Take that no reasonable expectation of privacy brigade!

Just have to use the rape scanners and IR enhancement now!

--The No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy Brigade

[DenverJay]

Yeah, just like DNA. People watch "CSI" and think there "DNA doesn't lie", with no idea about how the technology really works. In fact, I remember Reason doing a story on it a while back.
So now that the Supremes have decided that the police can collect your DNA anytime they arrest you, and the fact that your driver's licence photo is going to be scanned to see if it matches surveillance photos, maybe it is a good thing that the NSA is going to keep our phone records, because you never know when you might need an alibi.
Are they showing these photos in lineups too? Or just matching them with surveillance tapes?
This is really getting creepy- total surveillance indeed. I mean they are compiling a complete dossier on all of us, with photos, emails, phone records, everywhere our phones and cars go, everywhere that we show up on cameras....

[SomeGuy]

there is enough tracking to keep a tab on anyone that lives in the 21st century.

NSA controls 75% of the US internet

red light/ speed cameras
-they are connected to facial recognition in most states.

Cell phones are tracked 24/7

Many cars are tracked by GPS or license plate readers

Any financial transaction is instantly known.

IPASS/EZPASS

Soon medical history will be known as well.

All texts are stored

Phone calls my actually be recorded...no news yet confirming one or the other.

My god the list can go on. The surveillance state is really complete. They don't need more but they will still try.

They can find any crime you committed if they choose to go after you. Or they cna make it up....how will you disprove it?

[Monty Crisco]

Yes, Someguy, we live in an information age. We have all created this and the fact that you are on the internet commmenting on a website proves that you are part of it as well, and I am assuming you are a willing participant and that no one is forcing you to type that. Deal with it - information will be generated, collected and POTENTIALLY used. But here is the thing: you all want to gut the NSA (which is charged with spying on FOREIGN threats, fucktards) but seem to overlook the TRUE domestic threats to your liberty, like the IRS and these big-government LOCAL statists. When the fuck was the last time I read an article at reason on the IRS?!?!? But every other one is about the NSA?!?! What the fuck - the NSA is NOT interested in Americans. Believe me- they have a WHOLE OTHER PLANET worth of targets to worry about. But the IRS.... well, US citizens ARE their purview. Wake up, reasonoids....