How Far Will the Government Go in Collecting and Storing All Our Personal Data?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/10-9

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer equated GPS surveillance with the ultra-repressive government monitoring in George Orwell’s 1984 this week during the oral argument in United States v. Jones (.pdf). The case asks whether the use of a GPS tracking device to monitor an individual’s movements without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. But between the potential to monitor all public movements via GPS and the FBI’s ever-expanding Next Generation Identification (.pdf)(NGI) system, which collects and stores all aspects of our personal physical characteristics– our biometric data – Big Brother is already upon us.

NGI is a massive database program that collects and stores personal identifying information such as fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, scars, marks, tattoos, facial characteristics, and voice recognition. Data can be collected not only from arrested individuals, but also from latent prints (fingerprints left behind at a crime scene or anywhere else) or through handheld “FBI Mobile” biometric scanning devices. Worse than the FBI accessing all your personal data, when NGI becomes fully operational in 2014, other federal agencies will gain access to the bio-data without your knowledge or consent.

Documents that the FBI turned over only after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Day Labor Organizing Network, and the Benjamin Cardozo Immigrant Justice Clinic reveal that the FBI views massive biometric information collection as a goal in itself. The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services division (CJIS) has already conducted a test study with latent fingerprints and palm prints, collected more than one million palm prints, scheduled an iris scan pilot program, and plans future deployment of technology nationwide to collect other biometric data like scars, marks, tattoos, and facial measurements (.pdf). What’s more, the government continues to expand domestic use of FBI Mobile (.pdf) scanners initially used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How can anyone deny the growing presence of a police state here?

Transportation
Education
Health Care
Housing
Income
The Internet
Police
Civil Law
Finance
Environment
Production
Farming
Infrastructure
Utilities
???

Anything the government touches the government will collect data on the users. They have to. Businesses collect data on their users to better serve them, i.e. marketing research. If they do not they fail to meet demand for the consumption of their goods and services. You can't budget for enough food stamps to feed X people unless you track how many people are applying for food stamps.

The difference is, government is ultimately, at the end of the day, an instrument of force. Government housing sounds great but if you're a tax cheat -- or the government THINKS you're a tax cheat -- the housing department will talk to the tax department who will in turn talk to the police department and you will be arrested while trying to get your family out from under a bridge.

If you want government services you have to accept the fact that government agencies talk to each other and share data. Laws saying, "No, you can't share that." won't work, especially if you think your political polar opposites are willing to steal elections. If electronic ballots aren't sacred then neither will information firewalls.

first to the state and then to the feds. They need to know how much is used and how as well as how much each state needs for its people.

I think we are probably about 20+ years late on complaining about this. Data has been collected for years.

They only collect what people voluntarily submit through user-initiated interactions.

You have no choice to about coming into contact with the government. You have to deal with them and they are collecting data on you even if -- ESPECIALLY IF -- you are a law-abiding citizen. It's ironic (and kind of scary) that the government should have as much, if not more info on it's most peaceable and productive citizens, than it would have on those who live in the shadows of the law, hurting society.

If you're availing yourself of government services they do need to make sure YOU are YOU, and not some bozo pretending to be you. They can't hand you a social security check, or a public housing voucher, or food stamps, or any other government assistance, on your say-so.

Otherwise, those bozos living in the shadows won't have any trouble hijacking your identity for their own purposes. Already they do a lot of that.

It's only a matter of time before we go to biometric IDs. The military already captures a fingerprint when they issue an ID card.

We're not going backwards on this issue. It's the future, like it or not. It has good and bad elements. If you don't want to be tracked by GPS, don't use that technology. If you don't want the government in your business, limit your contact with them to the extent that you can and stay within the law.

can't wait for a Bachmann or some such to get hold of THAT to see which satanic parents are subjecting their kids to satanic, autism-inducing HPV vaccines.

if you just let us implant the RFID chip in your ass. Please be reasonable. Only the worst of the worst could object to measures which are necessary to ensure the safety of all.

Not quite as far as the free market will go, I'd hazard.

is no more possible storage space. nt