Pilot Begins for Israel’s National Biometric Database Program
After several delays, the Interior Ministry on Monday will commence the two-year pilot stage of Israel’s National Biometric Database Program. When completed, the database will include the biometric information - a face scan and fingerprints - of all Israeli citizens, accessible without court order to the police and security forces, including the army, the military police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). In addition, a court could also order the transfer of individual biometric information, and even the entire database, to other agencies and even to foreign bodies.
The database was an initiative of the security forces. The legislative effort, which was led my MK Meir Shitrit from Tzipi Livni’s Tnua party, was met with heavy criticism from the opposition and human rights groups, that warned of possible abuses of the power the database puts in the hands of authorities and of leaks that could see the information end up in the wrong hands. Most of the Interior Ministry’s current registration of Israeli citizens has already leaked to the Internet.
The government claimed that the database is needed in order to prevent the forging of Israeli ID cards and passports. However, critics point to the fact that the government could issue “Smart IDs,” which themselves store biometric data, without keeping the personal records in one national database.
More: Pilot Begins for Israel’s National Biometric Database Program
Army’s Fingerprint and Iris Databases Head for the Cloud
Still, the military is into biometrics in a big way. It’s created and maintained biometrics databases containing literally millions of iris and fingerprint scans from Iraqis and Afghans. The Iraq database has outlasted the Iraq war: it resides permanently at U.S. Central Command in Tampa.
Evidently unsatisfied with the clunky ViewFinder-esque mobile tools for collecting biometric data in the field, in February the Pentagon inked a $3 million research deal with California’s AOptix to check out its smartphone-based biometric identifier, built on an iPhone and iOS. Then there’s all the Pentagon’s additional research into identifying people by the unique pungencies of their body odor and the ways they walk.
The US Army had to rely on large numbers of Reservists to fight the war in Iraq. These Reservists consisted of a disproportionate percentage of reservists whose US occupations were policemen. These policemen were not concentrated in Military Police Units but were spread through out units there and while there, many had the task of deploying the vast Biometric technology used there. Many of those not faniliar with the detials of the war would say that it was the more visible technolgy of smart bombs and UAV that had the greatest effect there. But anyone who actually served on the ground Iraq will tell you it was the Biometrics that was the game changer. The same thing applies to Afghanistan.
It allowed the unabiguous identifciatcation of indivduals and analaysis that picked out terrorists. All movement by civilians within the war zones was recorded using US run Biometric check points. If your finger prints were found on an IED or around the scene of a bombing the next time you went through a check point you were caught. Or, if your were moving around bwtween different areas your movement was recorded at the check points and if those movements corellated to terrorists activity you were arrested the next time your were scanned.
These reservists who were trained in the technology and witnessed it effectiveness are now back in the US at thier police jobs ready for and advocating the use of this technolgy in the US.
What does the collection and use of personalized electronic information gathered by the NSA tell us about the use of Biometric technology here?