Washington, (Prensa Latina) The US Federal Bureau of Investigations is developing the world largest data base about people’s physical appearance, The Washington Post daily revealed on Saturday.
The newspaper said its objective is to allow the government identifying individuals easily in and out of this country.
As part of the project, valued at $1 billion, the FBI started to gather “digital images of faces, finger prints, and hand palm patterns in its systems,” the daily said.
The federal police will also keep the finger prints of employees, whose criminal records have been checked.
The Post highlighted that the increasing use of biometric data as identification originates questions about the US citizens’ right to avoid non-desired surveillance.
The newspaper recalled that the Defense Department already has a similar data base about more than 1,500,000 Iraqis, Afghans, and people from other countries.
It also highlighted that the US army collects DNA samples of numerous Iraqi prisoners.
The Internal Security Department also uses these procedures in some airports, to verify some travelers’ identities, and has another data base of millions of finger prints, the daily said.
If the system called Next Generation Identification succeeds, it will gather biometric information for identification and forensic purposes.