Facial Recognition Joins Feds With States
FBI-originated technology that identifies people from photographs will be deployed by 2014
Recently-released documents show that the FBI has been working since late 2011 with four states—Michigan, Hawaii, Maryland, and possibly Oregon—to ramp up the Next Generation Identification (NGI) Facial Recognition Program. When the program is fully deployed in 2014, the FBI expects its facial recognition database will contain at least 12 million "searchable frontal photos." (p. 6)
The documents, which the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) obtained from a recent meeting of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Advisory Policy Board,1 shed new light on the FBI's plans for NGI—the Bureau's massive biometrics database that combines fingerprints, iris scans, palm prints, facial recognition and extensive biographical data collected from over 100 million Americans.
