SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology watchdog, wants the Justice Department to hand over facial-recognition records before switching on the FBI's "bigger, faster and better" biometrics system.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the Department of Justice in a federal FOIA complaint. It claims the FBI has been "dragging its feet" for a year on three FOIA requests.
The EFF says in the complaint that the FBI has given a presentation "which included a graphic image that implied the Bureau wanted to use facial recognition to be able to track people from one political rally to another."
The EFF says it wants to "shine the light" on the FBI's biometrics program - slated for launch in 2014 - and particularly its facial-recognition components.
The FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometrics database will replace its IAFIS fingerprint system, which contains prints and criminal histories of 70 million criminal subjects and 73,000 known and suspected terrorists as well as 34 million civil prints from employment background checks and LiveScans.
The NGI - being built on a $1 billion contract with Lockheed Martin - will include multiple biometric identifiers, including iris scans, palm prints, face-recognition-ready photos and voice data, according to EFF.
The FBI will share the data with law enforcement agencies at the local, state, federal and international levels.
Photographic capabilities of the old fingerprint database have been extremely limited, allowing law enforcement agencies to submit only criminal mug shots. which are attached to biographical information. The old program lacks facial-recognition capabilities, making it impossible to search through mug shots independently from prints or data.
The FBI does not accept photographs for civil fingerprinting done for background checks or LiveScans. The EFF says that will change under the new system.
"NGI will change almost everything about how the FBI treats photograph submissions," the complaint states. "For example, NGI will allow 'the increased capacity to retain photographic images, additional opportunities for agencies to submit photographic images, and additional search capabilities including automated searches via the NCIC [National Crime Information Center].' The proposed new system would also allow law enforcement to 'collect and retain other images (such as those obtained from crime scene security cameras' and from friends and family) and would allow submission of 'civil photographs along with civil fingerprint submissions that were collected for non-criminal purposes,'" EFF says in its complaint, citing the FBI's specs on the new system. (Parentheses and quotation marks as in complaint.
Once a photograph has been fed into NGI, the system applies face-recognition algorithms to create a unique "faceprint" for each person, according to the complaint. This will allow law enforcement agencies to upload the photo of an unknown person and search a database of faceprints to find matches.
The EFF says the FBI has been testing its facial-recognition software with states that already have face-photo search capabilities in their own criminal databases. Also, DMVs in 37 states use facial-recognition programs-and the FBI is working with 10 of them, according to the complaint.