The FBI is launching a $1 billion initiative to develop the world’s largest biometrics database. The computer platform would collect information on people’s physical characteristics, according to a report in the Washington Post.
The technology, which has been named Next Generation Identification, will give the government new capabilities to identify people in the United States and abroad.
“Bigger. Faster. Better. That’s the bottom line,” Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the databases from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills, told the Washington Post.
Next-Generation Intel
The FBI already is compiling digital images of fingerprints, palm prints, and faces into its systems in Clarksburg, West Virginia, but the organization plans to award a 10-year contract in January that would expand the amount and types of biometric data it receives and stores in its computer systems.
For example, plans call for storing iris patterns, face-shape data, scars, and possibly even the unique ways people speak and walk — all in the name of tracking down criminals and solving crimes.
“It’s going to be an essential component of tracking,” Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Washington Post. “It’s enabling the always-on-surveillance society.”
Multibillion Biometrics
According to a new technical market research report by BCC Research called The Global Biometrics Market, the global market for biometrics was worth nearly $2 billion in 2006 and is expected to increase to $2.7 billion in 2007 and $7.1 billion by 2012, a compound annual growth rate of 21.3 percent over the next five years.
The market is broken down into applications of fingerprint, face, hand, and other recognition technologies. Fingerprint biometrics, the oldest form of biometrics in use today, will continue to be the main revenue contributor from 2007 to 2012, according to the report.
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