One In Two Americans In Facial Recognition Database

Not surprising, if you think about it:

DMV records, plus a cavalier approach to mugshot databases, puts half of the US in the system.

Half of all American adults are already in some sort of facial recognition network accessible to law enforcement, according to a comprehensive new study.

Conducted over a year and relying in part on Freedom of Information and public record requests to 106 law enforcement agencies, the study, conducted by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, found American police use of facial recognition technology is a scattered, hodgepodge network of laws and regulations.

Texas is known for insisting DMV photos be taken without glasses for facial recognition purposes, so presumably this is where the images are going. It would be interesting to know if Conservative states like Texas have to put all of their DMV photos into the database, while liberal states like California or New York don’t, and thus those 50% of people are disproportionately independent conservative wolves, rather than the liberal sheep who actually need government telling them what to do.

I remember seeing the movie Enemy of the State, and thinking afterward that despite its ridiculousness, if I had access to all those resources and was given that mission that is exactly what I would have created, so it may not have been that far-fetched. Of course with today’s technology, and the ridiculous budgets post-9/11, I would create something many times as powerful, and I am sure they have. Somebody on Free Republic even said there is a story that they got somebody who have them access to the Ancestry.com DNA database, and that was added to their files – which means if any relative of your’s is stupid enough to do that, they can get a familial match off of you.

Never assume that you are not being recorded and logged in the Apocalypse, and your activities are not trackable after the fact. It is a different age.