Is big brother watching too closely? Privacy groups fear it might be, with improvements and use of facial recognition technology on the rise. As part of a long overdue update to the national fingerprint database, the FBI has started to roll out a 1 billion dollar facial recognition program. That’s billion with a b. According to New Science, facial recognition has reached a point where it can match a single face out a pool of 1.6 million photos with 92% accuracy. The new database will also include iris scans, DNA analysis and voice identification, all of with the goal of catching criminals faster and more efficiently. But privacy groups worry about how the biometrics are being collected. In the past, database information has come from mostly mug shots, but now it will be coming from an assortment of places. They’re concerned that a person with no criminal past could end up in the database and be subjected to unwarranted surveillance.
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