Nashville City Council Passes Facial Recognition/FBI Spying Bill
July 9th, 2013
Cities nationwide have been ramping up police-state style “security theater” policies, and Music City, USA is no exception. Nashville is now littered with spy cameras, including on private property, with one even positioned in an above-view (unfortunately for people in some types of swim suits) at a public, government-run wave pool.
…but wait, there’s more! Last week, Nashville’s Metropolitan Council passed a bill that would allow it to submit pictures of Nashvillians’ faces to the FBI’s new facial recognition software database. Civil libertarians have deep concerns about the privacy implications that come with the use of this type of software. Such information could be used to track people in unprecedented ways, especially as the technology improves with time.
The FBI’s Quest to Collect Photos of All Americans’ Faces
For years, civil libertarians have suffered ridicule from others after warning that the FBI intends to develop a facial recognition database containing pictures of all Americans. Now, the program is out in the open, and cities across America are rushing to sign up and submit pictures of their citizens to the feds.
Statists claim that facial recognition software can be used by law enforcement in a similar manner to fingerprints. However, the technology also interacts with cameras, which are now beginning to pop up in virtually every public place. With time, these technologies could be combined to allow the government to monitor a citizen’s every move. A corrupt administration could identify political opponents by analyzing protest pictures. Also, facial recognition technology is sometimes used as a security key. By providing this private data to a third party, Nashville’s Metro Council may be putting some individuals at risk of identity theft.
The FBI Has No Right to the Data
The FBI is the federal government’s law enforcement agency. Constitutionally speaking, it only has authority over federal-level crimes. When someone is arrested for a state-level crime in Nashville, the federal government has no authority to enforce that law at all and thus has no right to any evidence collected, including mug shots of the accused. As it stands, the FBI has agreements with several states that allow the agency to collect photos of anyone accused of any crime.
The bill passed by Nashville’s Metro Council included some un-enforceable limitations on the FBI’s use of the data. Allegedly, the feds can’t use the data unless a person is already under investigation, but the FBI is known for investigating political activists, even when they’re not accused of any specific crime. Once the FBI has the data, it will be extraordinarily difficult for Nashville’s city government to have any influence over how it can be used, especially as new applications for the facial recognition tech emerge which give it entirely new capabilities.
Also, it has been rumored that the FBI, NSA, and other agencies have a master database of private info on Americans, which combines data from all the various federal alphabet gangs, called Main Core. Could these facial recognition photos wind up in the same database next to everyone’s private emails and phone records?
The right to privacy is slipping away rapidly.
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