The FBI is spending billions of dollars to construct a ‘Next Generation Identification’ biometrics system, but recent events show that the technology isn’t ready for primetime application.

Back in April 2013, the city of Boston was on edge. Someone had blown up the finish line at the Boston Marathon on Monday the 15th, and two days later, on Wednesday April 17, police still hadn’t announced whether or not they had any suspects. Reports filed days later show they were making progress. Acting on a tip from a man who lost a leg in the bombing, and using data from the many private and public surveillance cameras that blanket the area on Boylston street, investigators zeroed in on the man they called ‘Suspect 2’. That was Wednesday afternoon. 

WaPo reports:

“[F]acial-recognition software did not identify the men in the ball caps. The technology came up empty even though both Tsarnaevs’ images exist in official databases: Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver’s license; the brothers had legally immigrated; and Tamerlan had been the subject of some FBI investigation.” Tamerlan had also been arrested in Massachusetts on a 2009 domestic violence charge; his photograph was therefore in the FBI’s own CJIS database.

The expensive, potentially privacy destroying biometrics tool failed to work when it counted the most. Now, Iowa republican Senator Chuck Grassley suspects the FBI is hiding something about what it knew, and when. 

In a letter to the bureau, the Boston Herald writes, Grassley asked “what feds did to attempt to ID the Tsarnaevs before publishing their photos, and why FBI agents were spotted conducting surveillance near Central Square on April 18 — just hours before authorities say the brothers ambushed and murdered MIT campus cop Sean Collier.”

more @ http://privacysos.org/node/1213