Obama Administration Will Spend $1 Billion on Iris & Facial Recognition Technology

Candice Lanier - For over a year and a half, the Mexican government has been collecting an unprecedented amount of biometric data from minors ages 4 to 17 as part of a youth ID card program. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that the data is being gathered for Personal Identity Cards for minors. This I.D. card, according to Mexican authorities, will help streamline registration in schools and health facilities and comes embedded with digital records of iris images, fingerprints, a photograph and a signature for each minor.

EFF reports:

The ID card project is part of the integration of Mexico’s National Population Register (RENAPO), which is intended to provide a unique identity system to conclusively prove identities of all Mexican citizens. Under the program, the Ministry of the Interior will issue Citizen Identity Cards and Personal Identity Cards containing biometric information, first to youth, and later extending to Mexico’s entire adult population.

Since July of 2009, when President Felipe Calderón officially announced the creation of RENAPO, numerous observers have sounded the alarm that the endeavor violates individuals’ privacy rights. Despite serious concerns raised by a governmental accountability agency and a special commission tasked with studying the program, in January of 2011 Mexico nevertheless became the first country in the world to use iris scans as a component of ID cards.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been expanding its biometrics source from fingerprint to iris and facial recognition for identity verification. In addition to collecting iris and facial images on suspected illegal immigrants or immigrants arrested at border patrol stations,the DHS is also developing a program called Future Attribute Screening Technology.  The purpose of the program is to “detect cues indicative of mal-intent” based on factors including ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate.

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Net Neutrality Rules Published, Lawsuits Soon to Follow

Wired - The FCC has finally officially published long-delayed rules prohibiting cable, DSL and wireless internet companies from blocking websites and requiring them to disclose how they slow down or throttle their networks.

The so-called Net Neutrality rules (.pdf), passed along party lines in late December last year in a 3-2 vote, were published in the Federal Register Friday and will go into effect on November 20.
The basic outlines of the rules, which differentiate between fixed broadband (e.g. cable, fiber and DSL) and mobile broadband (the connection to smartphones and mobile hotspot devices):

The Commission adopts three basic protections that are grounded in broadly accepted Internet norms, as well as our own prior decisions.

-First, transparency: fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and commercial terms of their broadband services.

-Second, no blocking: fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services.

-Third, no unreasonable discrimination: fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.

One of the more contentious debates, left unresolved to either side’s liking, is whether wireless companies should be forced to play by the same fairness rules as cable and DSL internet providers do. Online activists argue that in absence of such rules, wireless carriers will throttle innovative services — while the carriers maintain that their networks are more congested and that competition will prevent any unfair behavior on their part.               More