The Biometric Frontier: "Show me your Papers" becomes "Open your Eyes" as Border Sheriffs Expand Iris Surveillance
"Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has found little funding for his 'big, beautiful wall.' In the meantime, however, another acquisition promised to deter
unauthorized immigrants is coming to the border: iris recognition
devices. Thirty-one sheriffs, representing every county along the
U.S.-Mexico border, voted unanimously on April 3 to adopt tools that
will capture, catalogue, and compare individuals’ iris data, for use
both in jails and out on patrol. Biometric Intelligence and Identification Technologies, the company behind the push, has offered the sheriffs a free three-year trial, citing
law enforcement’s difficulties in identifying unauthorized immigrants
whose fingerprints can be disfigured through manual labor or
self-inflicted wounds.
Iris recognition is just the latest surveillance technology helping fortify what the White House hopes will make up
a 'digital wall,' a concept that many border sheriffs view as less
intrusive than Trump’s envisioned 30-foot barricade stretching from
Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, California. For law enforcement, the
tool promises to help identify people without reliable fingerprints and
to deter repeat border crossers. And for Biometric Intelligence and
Identification Technologies, which frequently goes by BI2, rapid border
expansion means its existing national iris database will receive a huge
influx of biometric information on unauthorized immigrants, boosting
its product’s capabilities to potential law enforcement clients across
the country."
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