Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has just filed a lawsuit against the FBI and the Department of Justice, accusing them of ignoring its repeated requests for more information pertaining to their upcoming Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometrics database.

The foundation says that its requests were filed under the Freedom of Information Act, and demanded to know more about the databases’ size, its reliability, and what kind of privacy protections were in place. According to the EFF, there is a big risk that numerous innocent people may have “their photograph – and their unique face print – in a government-maintained criminal database without their knowledge.”

Face/Off

The NGI database is the FBI’s project to replace its outdated Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, known as IAFIS. This database is probably the largest of its kind anywhere in the world, said to store more than 100 million biometric records. But NGI is planned to be far more extensive. Developed by Lockheed Martin at a cost of more than $1 billion, the system is designed to collect iris scans, face-recognition prints, palm prints and voice records of convicted criminals, all of which will be available to a range of government agencies.

One aspect of NGI that’s attracted controversy however, is that it will merge civilian and criminal records into a single, unified database – in other words, those who have never set a foot wrong will be lumped in the same bracket as those with criminal records.

Upset by this news, the EFF submitted no less than three Freedom of Information requests asking for more details on NGI’s data sharing agreements. In addition, they asked about how reliable the system is, and how many records it stores currently.

Jennifer Lynch, staff attorney at EFF, summed up the foundation’s concerns in a blog post:

“NGI will result in a massive expansion of government data collection for both criminal and noncriminal purposes. Biometrics programs present critical threats to civil liberties and privacy. Face-recognition technology is among the most alarming new developments, because Americans cannot easily take precautions against the covert, remote, and mass capture of their images.”

“Before the federal government decides to expand its surveillance powers, there needs to be a public debate, but there can be no public debate until the details of the program are presented to the public.”

According to the EFF, the FBI has repeatedly ignored its requests, meaning its only recourse its to try and get the courts to force it to respond. The Freedom of Information Act obligates government agencies to disclose unclassified records whenever an application is made in writing, but thanks to the FBI’s delaying tactics, it’s unlikely we’ll see anything before NGI has been deployed.