So far both sides have offered up some pretty good arguments on this one.
I really don't know if RGS is right or not when he says there is no expectation of privacy here. That is certainly the case if you're already a suspect. But it's not really clear if that applies when it's a massive sweep of everyone in the database when obviously none of them have been identified as a suspect beforehand.
Of course this speaks to the legality/consititutionality of the matter. Setting aside whether it's "legal" according to current laws and constitutional interpretation and simply considering the rightness/wrongness of this based on my own principles I lean toward being ok with it. I don't really see the slippery slope danger here. They're just matching up faces in a database, they are not mining for any personal data of any kind about the people they're scanning. Again, legality aside, I just don't feel like my privacy is being violated if my license photo is among those scanned.
I appreciate your civility in this thread..
I also want to add that this situation is much akin to phone taps to find terrorists..
After all, they are only trying to find people who say things like "president" "bomb" nuclear" "hijack", etc.. RIGHT???
The rest of us are not targeted- even though this VERY message is now being scanned through some FBI computer as we speak..
Just because the government is "targeting" certain individuals, does not give them some kind of express authority to access everyone in the country's otherwise reasonably considered private information. I say that if my fucking chin matches up with some asshole terrorist's, and my cheekbones also happen to match up, then the Feds are prone to finding me, and framing me for anything they goddamned want, just to put my ass in some offshore prison long enough to build a fake ass case on me (or you, or any of us, for that matter!)
That is BULLSHIT. I have no problem whatsoever with them looking people up by their aliases and all that- and doing facial recognition that way, but they need to do a little more investigating before pinning something on someone who may very well be pinned for something, just by coincidence of how they look and the fact that they happened to recently move or whatever.
The FEDS seem to forget all about the incidences of twins, triplets, etc.. and the fact that even databases with warrant info on them explicitly say that positive identification cannot be established without fingerprints, etc.. I mean, come fucking on.. The FEDS dont get this??
PS- I am not saying "fucking" towards you, thats just how I talk, lol