FBI To Launch Nationwide Facial Recognition Campaign
The federal government is embarking on a multiyear, $1 billion dollar program to identify citizens.  The FBI by mid-January will activate a nationwide facial recognition system that will allow local police to identify subjects. The project, which was awarded to Lockheed Martin Corp. will be accessible by Homeland Security's IDENT PROGRAM. Civil liberties advocates questioned whether the facial recognition application would retrieve mug shots of those who have simply been arrested. "It might be inappropriate to have non-convicted (innocent) people in this system," said Jim Harper, director of information policy at the libertarian Cato Institute. FBI officials declined to comment on the recommendation. Harper also noted large-scale searches may generate a lot of false positives, or incorrect matches. Facial recognition "is more accurate with a Google or a Facebook, because they will have anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen pictures of an individual, whereas I imagine the FBI has one or two mug shots," he said.
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