A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (21 page)

Biometrics

Biometrics, a method of identifying someone based upon their individual biological traits, has enabled the government to go far beyond fingerprinting to pinpoint a person based on his most unique characteristics, whether it is the shape of his face, iris patterns, gait, or veins.
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Thanks to the corporate world's eagerness to jump on the biometrie bandwagon by requesting people's fingerprints rather than a password, for example, or an iris scan in lieu of a key, the government (its partner in crime, so to speak) now has an infinite number of ways in which to track each individual citizen.

With biometrics promising to be an $11 billion industry by 2017, the demand by government and corporate entities for these disguised data collection systems will only accelerate, as will the accuracy of the programs.
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For example, facial recognition, once thwarted by basic methods of evasion, can now identify "people obscured by sunglasses, hats, and windshields." Soon, it is expected that basic consumer items like cell phones will have the ability to carry out iris scans and fingerprint recognition.
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"In 10 years," predicts Joseph Atick, co-founder of the International Biometrics and Identification Association, "[facial recognition] technology is going to be so good you can identify people in public places very easily"
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Facial and iris recognition machines have come into greater use in recent years, ostensibly to detect criminals, streamline security checkpoints processes, and facilitate everyday activities. However, their uses are becoming more routine every day. For example, ticket holders at Walt Disney World must use their fingerprints to access the park. Some fitness centers, like 24 Hour Fitness, rely on fingerprint scans to give customers access to their facilities.
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In the summer of 2011, Facebook implemented a new facial recognition feature which automatically tagged individuals in photos uploaded by their friends.
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Iris Scanners

Iris scanning works by reading the unique pattern found on the iris, the colored part of the eyeball. This pattern is unique even among individuals with the exact same DNA.

The perceived benefits of iris scan technology, we are told, include a high level of accuracy, protection against identity theft, and the ability to quickly search through a database of the digitized iris information. It also provides corporations and the government–that is, the corporate state–with a streamlined, uniform way to track and access
all
of the information amassed about us, from our financial and merchant records, to our medical history, activities, interests, travels, and so on.

In this way, iris scans become de facto national ID cards, which can be implemented without our knowledge or consent. In fact, the latest generation of iris scanners can even capture scans on individuals in motion who are six feet away. And as these devices become more sophisticated, they will only become more powerfully invasive. As Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers, stated, "In the future, whether it's entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris. Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years."
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As
Fast Company
reports:

For such a Big Brother-esque system, why would any law-abiding resident ever volunteer to scan their irises into a public database, and sacrifice their privacy? GRI hopes that the immediate value the system creates will alleviate any concern. "There's a lot of convenience to this–you'll have nothing to carry except your eyes," says Carter, claiming that consumers will no longer

Iris Scanners at Work

be carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: "When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in."
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Iris scanning technology has already been implemented in the United States. For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a two-week test of iris scanners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, in October 2010. That same month, in Boone County, Missouri, the sheriff's office unveiled an Iris Biometrie station purchased with funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.
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Unknown by most, the technology is reportedly already being used by law enforcement in forty states throughout the country.
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There's even an iPhone app in the works that will allow police officers to use their iPhones for on-the-spot, on-the-go iris scanning of American citizens. The manufacturer, B12 Technologies, has already equipped police with iPhones armed with facial recognition software linked to a statewide database which, of course, federal agents also have access to. (And for those who have been protesting the whole-body imaging scanners at airports as overly invasive, just wait until they include the iris scans in their security protocol. The technology has already been tested in about twenty U.S. airports as part of a program to identify passengers who could skip to the front of security lines.)

AOptix Technologies, a force behind cutting-edge biometrics, proudly boasts that its scanners are not only fully automated but can capture high quality images at eighteen meters and perform stand-off iris recognition at two meters. Moreover, the company credits itself with the successful iris enrollment of children as young as five months of age.
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Of course, iris enrollment of five-month-old babies serves little purpose other than to ensure that future generations will be registered and catalogued in a database long before they're old enough to realize its sinister implications. Then again, it's a safe bet that those same young people will be so immersed in the surveillance culture as to never recognize the electronic concentration camp closing in on them.

Facial Recognition Software

The FBI's $1 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which expands the government's current ID database from a fingerprint system to a facial recognition system using a variety of biometrie data, cross-referenced against the nation's growing network of surveillance cameras, not only tracks your every move but creates a permanent "recognition" file on you within the government's massive databases.
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By the time it's fully operational in 2014,
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NGI will serve as a vast data storehouse of "iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos." One component of NGI, the Universal Face Workstation, already contains some 13 million facial images, gleaned from "criminal mug shot photos" taken during the booking process. However, with major search engines having "accumulated face image databases that in their size dwarf the earth's population,"
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it's only a matter of time before the government taps into the trove of images stored on social media and photo sharing websites such as Facebook.

Real-Time Surveillance

Also aiding and abetting police in the government's efforts to track our every movement in real time is Trapwire, which allows for the quick analysis of live feeds of people's facial characteristics from CCTV surveillance cameras. Some of Trapwire's users range from casinos in Las Vegas to police in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Canada, and London.
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Utilizing Trap-wire in conjunction with NGI, police and other government agents will be able to pinpoint anyone by checking the personal characteristics stored in the database against images on social media websites, feeds from the thousands of CCTV surveillance cameras installed throughout American cities (there are 3,700 CCTV cameras tracking the public in the New York subway system alone
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), as well as data being beamed down from the more than 30,000 surveillance drones taking to the skies within the next eight years.

SkyWatch Mobile Surveillance Tower

Given that the drones' powerful facial recognition cameras will be capable of capturing minute details, including every mundane action performed by every person in an entire city simultaneously,
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soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

A Noxious Mix

The government's massive identification databases include criminals and non-criminals alike–in other words, innocent American citizens. The information is being amassed through a variety of routine procedures, with the police leading the way as prime collectors of biometrics for something as non-threatening as a simple moving violation.
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This effort is helped along by the Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, a physical iPhone add-on that allows officers patrolling the streets to scan the irises and faces of individuals and match them against government databases.
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The nation's courts are also doing their part to "build" the database, requiring biometric information as a precursor to more lenient sentences. In March 2012 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law allowing DNA evidence to be collected from anyone convicted of a crime, even if it's a non-violent misdemeanor.
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New York judges have also begun demanding mandatory iris scans before putting defendants on trial.

Then there are the nation's public schools, where young people are being conditioned to mindlessly march in lockstep to the pervasive authoritarian dictates of the surveillance state. It was here that surveillance cameras and metal detectors became the norm. It was here, too, that schools began reviewing social media websites in order to police student activity. With the advent of biometrics, school officials have gone to ever more creative lengths to monitor and track students' activities and whereabouts, even for the most mundane things. For example, students in Pinellas County, Florida, are actually subjected to vein recognition scans when purchasing lunch at school.
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Of course, the government is not the only looming threat to our privacy and bodily integrity. As with most invasive technologies, the groundwork to accustom the American people to the so-called benefits or conveniences of facial recognition is being laid quite effectively by corporations. For example, a new Facebook application, Facedeals, is being tested in Nashville, Tennessee, which enables businesses to target potential customers with specialized offers. Yet another page borrowed from Stephen Spielberg's film
Minority Report
, the app works like this: businesses install cameras at their front doors which, using facial recognition technology, identify the faces of Facebook users and then send coupons to their smartphones based upon things they've "liked" in the past.
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