In 2003, Colorado was one of the first states to adopt the technology, implementing it ahead of many larger states because “its relatively small size made the database more manageable,” the Denver Post reported January 2. Biometrics is also being used in three other states and the District of Columbia, according to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

Police may now ask for a driver’s license photo during an investigation. State officials are considering proposals for authorizing cops to have access to the entire database.

Even before Sept. 11, 2001, Colorado officials had been trying to increase the amount of personal information incorporated into the state’s driver’s license.

State authorities ended the policy of immediate issuance of licenses about a year ago, the Post reported. Now applicants receive their license in about week, once a clerk has compared their previous photos, takes a fingerprint, and judges whether the applicant is “legitimate.”

First-time license-seekers in Colorado trigger the computer-operated facial recognition program. Their picture is scanned and compared against the state’s database of 12 million photos. Through this computer program, Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) employees scan the faces of about 1,200 to 1,500 applicants a week.

The DMV turns over “suspicious” photos to police agencies. Charges are filed in two to five cases a month, according to state officials. The State Department of Revenue is considering taking similar measures, exchanging photo-matching requests with neighboring states and allowing cops to have access to the database.

“It’s a national trend in driver’s license operations to make the document more secure,” said Steve Tool, a Division of Motor Vehicles official. “Using biometrics, we do a better job with identification.”

Jack Riley, of Rand Corporation, a right-wing think-tank, predicted that all states will eventually use biometrics in the production of driver’s licenses, using one of a number of technologies: facial recognition, iris scans, fingerprints, or other forms of identification.

Ceding ground to the arguments for such intrusions on the right to privacy, Cathryn Hazouri, executive director of the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “That would be terrific if you could rely upon it, but one of the big problems with facial-recognition technology is that there are so many variables, including the quality of the driver’s license and that faces change with age.”

Meanwhile, officials in Washington announced January 3 that they have extended a digital screening system to the 50 busiest U.S. land ports of entry along the Canadian and Mexican borders. This program had been launched a year earlier to help identify visitors to the United States arriving by air or sea.

The program is called US-VISIT, or U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology. Digital scanners examine prints taken from an individual’s two index fingers, and photographs of the person taken with digital cameras. The “identifiers” produced with this equipment can then be matched against several databases, checking people against various federal and state watch lists.

Last year, authorities used this program to deny entry to the United States to 372 people charged with violating immigration law or other federal or state crimes. None were sought for links to “terrorist” activity, according to officials at the Department of Homeland Security.  
 
 
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