The Texas Republican wants to prohibit massive government databases of DNA samples, photographs, and retinal scans. It seems like everywhere you turn there's another government attempt to accumulate more information about us. Aides to Paul, who has emerged as a prominent privacy advocate in Congress, drew up the sweeping new bill after a public outcry arose over federal tax dollars being used to build a national database of driver-license photographs. This whole process smells bad to me, and I thought I'd call attention to it among my colleagues by introducing this bill. The federal government has recently begun to record more biometric information about Americans.
Biometric technology allows the automatic recognition of a person based on physical characteristics.
The Army issues recruits at Fort Still, Oklahoma stored value cards that require the correct fingerprint to use. The Immigration and Naturalization Service uses voice-identification technologies at some airports. The FBI is busy scanning paper fingerprint cards to create digital images and is feeding them into the National Crime Information Center computer, which the government says receives more than 2 million queries a day. The NCIC database is already overflowing with information about 32 million Americans, and Attorney General Janet Reno wants to add DNA samples taken from anyone arrested. Send it .