Civil rights groups in the U.S. have expressed their concerns over the implementation of biometrics in US passports, and what they see as the intrusive nature of biometrics technology. As far as they're concerned, Big Brother is definitely watching.

Soon, all newly issued U.S. passports will include a digital image of the bearer's face, along with biographic information on an electronic chip embedded in the passport. The U.S. government will conduct a pilot test on the technology with the issuance of biometric passports to its employees, starting in December 2004. The general public is expected to begin receiving the new passports in the first quarter of calendar year 2005. By the end of 2005, all domestically produced U.S. passports will be biometric passports.

Canada and the UK both plan to follow suit and will begin introducing biometric passports in 2005. Since late 2003, the British government has been conducting a biometric enrollment pilot; evaluating issues around biometric recording, using facial recognition and fingerprints.

The biggest concerns expressed by civil rights groups surround the facial recognition technology, which analyzes images of human faces for the purpose of identifying them. A facial recognition system is computer software taking a facial image and conducting series measurements, such as the distance between the eyes, the angle of the jaw and the length of the nose. A unique file is created, which can be compared with other images generated by the software.

U.S. government studies of face-recognition computer programs have found high rates of both "false positives" and "false negatives." In this age of hyper security concerns, these results do not seem to offer much assurance for a full proof detection system.

US Immigration guide: visa, green card lottery, and immigration attorney directory. Immigration information regarding temporary and permanent visa types, and paths to legalized immigrant status in the U.S.

The above article may be re-published as long as the content remains unchanged including the URL links.