It turned out that the data of "iris scan" that uses human eyeball for biometric recognition is collected by FBI 430 thousand people

ByAndreas Levers

It is a thin membrane in the human eyeball and has the function of adjusting the size of the pupiliris(Koto) "is known to have different patterns by individuals. Using this feature, with a special machineIris recognitionTo identify an individual just like a fingerprintBiometricsTechnology exists, but the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) in the United States has developed an iris authentication system as part of the "pilot program" and it is clear that more than 430,000 data have already been gathered became.

The FBI has collected 430,000 iris scans in a so-called 'pilot program' | The Verge
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/12/12148044/fbi-iris-pilot-program-ngi-biometric-database-aclu-privacy-act

San Bernardino County, California, which is a mid-sized town with a population of 2 million and the number of sheriffs is also around 1,800, is not particularly noticeable compared to other major cities, but why this town At the project underway which the FBI is leading and is being advanced in several regions throughout the country. According to the document that The Verge independently obtained it, it has been revealed that the sheriff office in San Bernardino County has acquired iris data from more than 200,000 arrests over the past two and a half years I will. In the first half of 2016, it is also clear that 189 people per day of iris data are collected, and it is said that it is one of the regions where the project is particularly active in the United States.

FBI has been conducting a project to acquire people's iris data as part of the "pilot program" since 2013. FBI spokesperson for the interview of The Verge will be arrested in the United States by the first half of 2016 I admit that iris data for 434,000 people are collected.

In promoting a large-scale data collection project, the FBI has agreed to share information with border guards, Department of Defense (Pendagon), local law enforcement agencies, etc. In particular, California has been actively collecting data, as well as in Texas and Missouri, where data is being collected and is being stocked one after the other.

I heard that "Collecting iris data of arrested people" is a project that seems to be seen as being carried out from the viewpoint of crime prevention, but in reality it is implemented at a point outside the framework of protection regulation on privacy It is said that it is cited as a big problem. Nicole Ozerle, executive officer at the American Free Human Rights Association (ACLU), says, "It is a very big problem that these systems are being advanced one after another without any general opinion exchange or supervision."

The place where Iris certification was introduced for the first time in the United States is that Iraq where the US was dispatching military. Starting with the introduction of the iris authentication system as a system for managing staff working at military-related facilities, dissemination has progressed as a security system of airports and private homes in various places, but local police It was expensive to deploy to the organization and was skipped as there are many technically vague things.

ByThe U.S. Army

However, the situation will start to change in 2013. FBI has started a pilot program for iris authentication as an effort to update personal authentication technology that has become old this year. Mr. Nick Menga of the FBI, who is proceeding with the project on the merit of incorporating iris authentication technology in parallel with conventional fingerprint authentication and face recognition technology, said, "The prisoner who has been released as a jailbreaker or another person by mistake, It is particularly useful for identifying people. " Unlike traditional fingerprint authentication, iris authentication does not come in contact with the person himself / herself, and it is technically possible to authenticate even if they pass each other in the city.

The fact that the project was actually started in 2013 is recorded also in the official document requested by The Verge. According to that document, at that time iris data of more than 30,000 people was acquired, but it seems that the method of searching was not completed from among them. So FBI will work with a wide range of partners to develop plans to study the feasibility of an actually searchable iris data system. The plan which was originally supposed to be completed in one year is that it is actually continuing even in 2016 as it renews every year after that. And at this moment new iris data is being accumulated one after another.

About the actual data provider FBI does not clarify the details, but from public documents data is acquired in areas such as Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, via the California state police organization and sent to FBI It is said that. And here it will be stored in a form linked to the fingerprint data of the arrestor and the mug shot (the photograph of the arrested person).

ByWackystuff

The Verge points out that it is full of unknown whether these data were actually used for criminal investigation. Although the system that does not know exactly how much effect is actually continued continues and the situation that the privacy concerning examination is not sufficiently continued continues, in the preliminary evaluation concerning the privacy carried out in 2014 " Evaluation on the impact on individual privacy is based on the fact that "the program is being implemented within limited time by limited participants, to evaluate the effectiveness of the iris authentication system" It is judged to be unnecessary.

According to Mr. Ozer of the American Association for Freedom of Human Rights, according to the agreement the FBI and California state have, only FBI is forced to deal with information "legally", California states "according to the privacy law prescribed by the state" It is said that it is required to be necessary, and there are parts that are very obscure in terms of privacy protection.

In FBI, it is the next generation personal authentication systemNext Generation Identification(NGI) project is in progress. The iris authentication system is also being developed as a part of it, and FBI intends to exclude this NGI from the application of the Privacy Act (obligation to always provide the latest public information) It is said that there is. In response to this move, individuals and organizations that support the protection of personal information say, "Although there are reasonable reasons to allow law enforcement activities to be excluded from the provisions of the law, that will overwhelm the Personal Information Protection Act "We are submitting a statement to the FBI asking individuals to guarantee a system that can check the activities of FBI.

Various opinions exist regarding the government's storage of personal authentication data. Mr. Ozere raises the question "What do you think would be meaningful if iris data of tens of millions of citizens are registered each year in the database?"

ByPeter Gorges