Compliance Management, Privacy

FBI facial recognition system ready for use

The FBI has announced that it is prepared to roll out its new facial recognition system.

The Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which has more than 16 million face images according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), is intended to expand the agency's biometric identification program and ultimately replace its outdated Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, according to a recent release.

The EFF, a digital rights advocacy group, recently expressed concern over the agency's program because 4.3 million images “taken for non-criminal purposes,” would be stored alongside those of criminals. A report by the EFF shares that the database will be able to process up to 55,000 direct photo enrollments per day.

According to the FBI's release, the agency believes that this is “a significant step forward” in “utilizing biometrics as an investigative enabler.”

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