Don’t Let Your Face Turn You In

The science fiction I used to read years ago was only mildly adventurous and rather amusing compared to our government’s real-life bag of tricks. Did you know that high-tech wizardry is making us instantly and suspiciously recognizable to Big Brother?

Brace yourself for “FBI’s Facial Recognition Is Coming to a State Near You,” a chilling report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That digital watchdog group is the most alert and knowledgeable protector of what’s left of our individual liberties, which have been imperiled by the government’s systematic target-killing of the Constitution. By expanding its Next Generation Identification program (NGI), the FBI now has a “massive biometrics database that combines fingerprints, iris scans, palm prints, facial recognition and extensive biographical data collected from over 100 million Americans.”

Just imagine the reactions of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry if they could have foretold that the nation they were founding would eventually have a government keeping close track of almost one-third of its citizens. Without a doubt, many more millions are destined to be added to what promises to be ever-growing databases. I expect Jefferson would have torn up the Declaration of Independence he’d drafted in 1776 as a prelude to starting another revolution.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation discloses that in its surge to make NGI more wide-ranging, “the FBI is developing ‘Universal Face Workstation software’ to allow states that don’t have their own ‘Face/Photo search capabilities’ to search through the FBI’s images.”