DHS Ditches Legacy Systems and Goes Puts Biometrics on Cloud
nextgov.com
nextgov.com
Oh. No. Oh God, no.
> It will also allow the agency to look beyond the three types of biometric data it uses today—face, iris and fingerprint—to identify people through a variety of other characteristics, like palm prints, scars, tattoos, physical markings and even their voices
I'm not entirely sure about their general use of this data; if this is opt-in employee data, fair enough. Seems like a pretty big invasion of privacy to me though.
> But as the agency rolls out facial recognition technology across U.S. airports and increases the use of biometrics at the border, officials are finding themselves constrained by their legacy tech.
Oh. This is that data. We are storing private civilian data on-line.
> HART will be housed in Amazon Web Services’ GovCloud
This is somehow worse than I could have imagined.
> The phase-two solicitation also surveillists DNA-matching as a potential application of the HART system.
Getting worse.
> While the department doesn’t currently analyze DNA, officials on Wednesday announced they would start adding DNA collected from hundreds of thousands of detained migrants to the FBI’s criminal database.
Yep, there it is.
The government is changing the way it stores information it should not have, and putting the information on-line. On Amazon. And is using this data to surveil the American public and to profile immigrants. These former incapabilities weren't "holding them back" - they were keeping the hounds at bay.