Officials with the Rhode Island Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) are insisting that the organizations is not in talks to share driver data with the FBI, reports the Providence Journal.
It’s a response to alarms raised by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose local director asked the Rhode Island DMV Administrator if the organization was negotiating the sharing of its driver license photos for the FBI’s Next Generation Identification program. The question was the product of a recent report from the Government Accountability Office indicating that the FBI has been running a secret biometric identification program based on facial recognition, and using the driver license photos in the databases of 16 cooperating states. Eighteen more states, including Rhode Island, were said to be in talks with the FBI.
Now, Rhode Island DMV Administrator Walter Craddock has exclaimed to the Providence Journal in an email that his organization is not in any such negotiations and that “we absolutely have no plans to do so,” adding that his team team is “disappointed they did not give the Division the chance to respond to these questions before jumping to this conclusion and unnecessarily alarming Rhode Islanders.”
The vehemence of Craddock’s refutation indicates the sensitivity of the issue. And with the FBI seeking to exempt its NGI program from certain Privacy Act provisions, it’s quite possible that its activities could lead to further consternation as the program expands.
Source: Providence Journal
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July 11, 2016 – by Alex Perala
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