If the FBI Has Your Biometrics, It Doesn't Have to Tell You

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
> Date: August 3, 2017 at 7:47:10 AM EDT
> To: Infowarrior List <infowarrior () attrition org>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: If the FBI Has Your Biometrics, It Doesn't Have to Tell You
>
> If the FBI Has Your Biometrics, It Doesn't Have to Tell You
>
> By Mohana Ravindranath August 2, 2017
>
> http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2017/08/if-fbi-has-your-biometrics-it-doesnt-have-tell-you/139952/
>
> The FBI’s Next Generation Identification system stores the biometric records of people who have undergone background 
> checks for jobs, volunteer positions and military service, as well as of those who have criminal records. Effective 
> Aug. 31, that database will be exempt from certain parts of the Privacy Act, a law that allows people whose records 
> are held by the federal government to request more information about which records those are.
>
> The exemption means the FBI doesn't have to acknowledge if it is storing the biometric records of an individual in 
> that database; the bureau has argued that notifying people that they were in the database could compromise 
> investigations.
>
> The FBI published the final rule this week.
>
> Under the rule, individuals won't be able to find out what types of records the FBI may have of because it could 
> “specifically reveal investigative interest by the FBI or agencies that are recipients of the disclosures.”
>
> Most of the criminal records in that database are obtained from state and local agencies at the time of arrest, so 
> the FBI cannot always collect information directly from the individual or notify them that their records are being 
> included. "It is not feasible," the final rule said. 
>
> The FBI posted a draft of that rule last year. In that draft, the bureau argued that some records it keeps might seem 
> irrelevant to ongoing investigations, but could eventually end up being necessary for “authorized law enforcement 
> purposes."
>
> The Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington, has tried to persuade the FBI to reduce 
> its data collection and the exemptions from the Privacy Act. After suing the FBI for information about the 
> information stored in the Next Generation Identification System, EPIC concluded that the database has an up to 20 
> percent error rate for facial recognition searches.
>
> Though it’s not clear exactly how many records are in the system, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, another 
> advocacy group, estimated in 2014 that it could contain up to 52 million facial images by 2015.
>
> One of the most troubling consequences of the final rule is that people in the database might become the subject of 
> investigation without being notified, Jeramie Scott, EPIC’s Domestic Surveillance Project director, told Nextgov. A 
> person whose image is erroneously called up in a search for a different individual might also find themselves being 
> investigated, he explained.
>
> The FBI is “now in a position as the determiner of when the exemption applies,” he said.



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