The FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping

CNN reports The FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping about the balance between a safer society and a surveillance society. The FBI is going to launch a program about creating a massive database that will collect biometric information. The FBI says this database can help keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our children from living in a dangerous country. In order to identify a potential suspect more efficiently, the future database contains palm prints, scars, tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes. However, critics say people are being forced to give up too much personal information. The FBI sometimes runs background checks for people applying sensitive jobs in the government. Furthermore, an employer could ask the FBI to keep the prints of an employee on file for future reference --- in case the person ever has any criminal records. Some other problems including how reliable these new database will be and can the FBI collect these information only on criminals and those seeking sensitive jobs.



The line between privacy and national security is becoming unclear. The government tends to tell people that sacrificing a little privacy is better than suffering from terrorist attacks or violence crime that might happen in your neighborhood. Of course, these are the advantages. However, there is always a debate about surveillance society. The federal government might overrule the state governments under the name of national security and force them to collect more private information from people. For violence crime like series killer or sex offender, this new expanding database could help, but for terrorists attack? Maybe not. They have so strong believes that they will find other ways to avoid being detected by police or authorities in order to accomplish their mission.



Posted by Yuan-chi Lin (Irene)