FBI's facial recognition database will contain 52 million images by 2015

[techbeck]

The FBI is currently building a massive facial recognition database, and now we have an idea of just how big that database is. According to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) database will contain a whopping 52 million photos by 2015, up significantly from the 16 million the database contained in the middle of 2013. Beyond the size of the database, the documents obtained by EFF's Freedom of Information Act requests also showed that database includes 4.3 million images obtained for "non-criminal purposes."

 

It's not clear exactly where these non-criminal photos came from, but currently jobs that require a background check or fingerprinting send those prints to the FBI for its civil database. The EFF notes that similar jobs that require also an identification photo may send those images to the FBI for its database to be included alongside fingerprints.

 

Also of note is how this new data will be stored ? the NGI database will contain both criminal and non-criminal records side by side. That's different from the FBI's fingerprint database, which kept those records completely separate ? any query to the criminal fingerprint data base wouldn't ever touch the civilian data. However, searches run on the NGI will query the entire database. The EFF says that even those who haven't been arrested for a crime could have their facial images searched by the FBI.

 

More...

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/14/5613928/fbi-facial-recognition-database-will-contain-52-million-images-by-2015

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