[Infowarrior] - US creates terrorist fingerprint database

[Richard Forno]

US creates terrorist fingerprint database
By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1227/p01s03-usfp.html

The US government is building a massive database designed to identify
individual terror suspects from fingerprints on objects such as a tea glass
in an Iraqi apartment or a shell casing in an abandoned Al Qaeda training
camp.

The database is being created in part by forensic specialists searching for
and preserving evidence overseas. They are collecting unidentified latent
fingerprints in places once occupied by Al Qaeda and other suspected
terrorists.

The information is feeding into a computerized system designed to match a
name with an unidentified fingerprint.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff calls the program "a quantum
step forward in security."

"(It) gives us the ability to identify the unknown, unidentified terrorist,"
he said in a recent speech. "It also creates a powerful deterrent for
anybody who has ever spent time sitting in a training camp, or building a
bomb in a safe house, or carrying out a terrorist mission on a battlefield."

Not everyone sees the creation of such a database as progress. Privacy
advocates and civil libertarians say it could lead to a dangerous erosion of
American rights.

Privacy advocates voice concern

"Our assessment of these systems is that many that are undertaken with a
goal of identifying terrorists eventually become systems of mass
surveillance directed toward the American public," says Marc Rotenberg,
president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington.

"When Secretary Chertoff says we are trying to identify people who were in
safe houses in Iraq with terrorists, that is a very small part of the
story," Mr. Rotenberg says. "The technology used to identify a terrorist in
a safe house in Iraq is the exact same technology that can be used to
identify a war protester in a Quaker meeting house in southern Florida."

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the
completion of a database system that collects electronic fingerprints of
both the index and middle fingers of every noncitizen entering the US. The
system now documents 64 million travelers. The Homeland Security database is
being linked with the FBI's database of more than 40 million subjects.

The effort prevented 1,300 convicted criminals and immigration law violators
from entering the US, and blocked 1,000 others from gaining visas, according
to Mr. Chertoff.

Now, Homeland Security is upgrading from a two-finger to a 10-finger system.
In effect, it requires foreign visitors to submit to the kind of extensive
fingerprinting usually reserved for criminals. But officials say that
collecting all 10 prints ensures compatibility with the FBI database, and
increases the investigative utility of the computerized system.

"Ten prints allows us to run not only against the database of known felons
or known terrorists where we have fingerprints linked to a particular name,
it lets us run against the databases we are collecting for latent
fingerprints that are picked up in battlefields or safe houses or training
camps all over the world," Chertoff said.

An unidentified latent print from a known terror safe house could provide an
early warning by triggering an investigation if it matches someone trying to
gain entry into the US, officials say.

Privacy advocates say the system is being presented to the American public
and Congress as an antiterrorism tool. But they warn it could vastly
increase the government's ability to track and investigate US citizens.

"It makes it sound as though this will have a limited purpose - terrorism,
and a limited scope - non-Americans, but the reality is that the system is
not going to be so limited," says Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation based in San Francisco. "They will be using it for every kind of
law enforcement there is. They will be collecting fingerprints on Americans,
and it will be used for every general purpose."

Fingerprinting part of ID science

Fingerprinting is a subset of a rapidly developing area of identification
science called biometrics. Researchers are studying how to identify
individuals in a crowd by using computers to match unique facial
characteristics to those same characteristics on a driver's license photo.
The federal and state governments are assembling databases preserving the
DNA of convicted criminals. And studies are underway to use eye scans to
identify individuals. But by far the government's largest identifying
database relates to fingerprints, and it may soon grow larger.

In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act, which instructs DHS to develop a
single standard for all state-issued driver's licenses and identification
cards. The ID is expected to include a biometric identifier. Many experts
say the most likely candidate will be a fingerprint.

If adopted, that action would create for the first time a government
database of fingerprints of virtually every adult American citizen. "This
could come home to Americans very, very quickly," Rotenberg says.

Privacy advocates say they are hopeful that the new Democratic Congress will
exert an aggressive oversight posture and study the implications of the
fingerprint program before it is in place.

An Oregon lawyer and his fingerprints

They point to the case of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield.

The case began in mid-March 2004, shortly after terrorist bombs ripped
through commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people and injuring
1,400. After the attacks, Spanish authorities found fingerprints on a
plastic bag with detonators.

The FBI ran the prints through its computer system and found no matches, but
identified several close nonmatches. Mr. Mayfield was the fourth of 20 close
nonmatches.

Three FBI fingerprint examiners studied the Madrid fingerprint, and
concluded that it had been made by Mayfield.

Mayfield's print was in the FBI's database because he had served in the
armed forces and had earlier been charged with a crime.

FBI investigators learned that Mayfield had converted to Islam and had
married an Egyptian immigrant. He also had served as the attorney in a
custody case for a man who was convicted of conspiring to aid the Taliban
and Al Qaeda.

Justice Department officials say this information was unknown to the three
examiners when they matched Mayfield's print to the Madrid bombing.

Spanish officials had their doubts about the match. They rejected the FBI's
conclusion and continued to investigate.

The FBI dismissed the skepticism of Spanish authorities. One official in the
investigation wrote: "I spoke with the lab this morning and they are
absolutely confident that they have a match on the print. No doubt about
it!!!! They will testify in any court you swear them into."

The FBI began surveilling Mayfield and his family, including covertly
entering his home and office. Mayfield was arrested and held in prison for
two weeks.

Concerned about the possibility of a mistake, a federal judge ordered an
independent analysis of the fingerprint. That analyst also concluded that
the print belonged to Mayfield.

Two million dollar settlement

That same day, Spanish authorities identified an Algerian man as the real
source of the fingerprint.

Eventually, the FBI retracted its earlier conclusion. Last month the Justice
Department agreed to pay Mayfield a $2 million settlement and issued a
formal apology.

The Justice Department Inspector General's review of the case earlier this
year warned about using a large database like the FBI's. "The enormous size
of the (FBI) database and the power of the ... program can find a
confusingly similar candidate print," the report says.

Mayfield says he was singled out because of his Muslim faith.

The Justice Department concluded that the fingerprint examiners were not
aware that Mayfield was a Muslim with a connection to a convicted Al Qaeda
supporter when they made the initial match. But later the examiners became
aware of those facts, contributing to the FBI's reluctance to investigate
whether they had fingered an innocent man, according to the Justice
Department review.

Asked about the Mayfield case after his Nov. 30 speech, Chertoff
acknowledged that mistakes had been made. But he added that mistakes are
made in the criminal justice system, and no one suggests repealing the
criminal code.

"We should make our techniques better but we shouldn't throw the whole
process out because there are inevitable mistakes," he said.