[Infowarrior] - Driver's License Emerges as Crime-Fighting Tool, but Privacy Advocates Worry

[Richard Forno]

(c/o MS)

Driver's License Emerges as Crime-Fighting Tool, but Privacy
Advocates Worry

By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
February 17, 2007

BOSTON, Feb. 12 - On the second floor of a state office building
here, upstairs from a food court, three facial-recognition
specialists are revolutionizing American law enforcement. They work
for the Massachusetts motor vehicles department.

Last year they tried an experiment, for sport. Using computerized
biometric technology, they ran a mug shot from the Web site of
"America's Most Wanted," the Fox Network television show, against the
state's database of nine million digital driver's license photographs.

The computer found a match. A man who looked very much like Robert
Howell, the fugitive in the mug shot, had a Massachusetts driver's
license under another name. Mr. Howell was wanted in Massachusetts on
rape charges.

The analysts passed that tip along to the police, who tracked him
down to New York City, where he was receiving welfare benefits under
the alias on the driver's license. Mr. Howell was arrested in October.

At least six other states have or are working on similar enormous
databases of driver's license photographs. Coupled with increasingly
accurate facial-recognition technology, the databases may become a
radical innovation in law enforcement.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/us/17face.html?ex=1329368400&en=8782b7320b
2e7a40&ei=5090