PA- New identification technology used by police criticized for being potentially invasive

12-2-2008 Pennsylvania:

Since 1991, law enforcement has worked to develop more and more comprehensive listings of sex offenders not only to aid its investigations but also to protect citizens. After the initial success of Minnesota's Sex Offender Registration Act, the nation as a whole has worked to continuously improve a detailed, national registry of sex offenders, most notably as of late with the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act. This series of legislation has benefited not only law enforcement agencies, but also various individuals and organizations, ranging from Boy Scout troops to daycare centers, in their attempts to screen out convicted offenders.

While the benefits of the creation of a national database have been undeniably beneficial in many ways, detractors point out that not all the results have been positive.

Criticisms range from the creation of legal situations involving double jeopardy to the negative psychological effects on the offenders themselves, and have garnered much attention from civil rights groups. Such groups, especially the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have recently been concerned with the recent, localized implementation of a new method of tracking sex offenders: iris scanning.

Quick, relatively simple, although yet unproven and legally unconfirmed, iris scanning technology has been recently developed by BI2 Technologies in Plymouth, Ma., enabling law enforcement agencies to scan the eyes of convicted sex offenders and place those images in a database that would potentially be nationally available.

Unlike usual fingerprinting identification, this type of identification provides dozens more unique points of identification that cannot change over time or be altered in any way, including Lasik surgery.

Several sheriffs' offices in Massachusetts, New Mexico, California, and other areas have already invested in this type of technology and are beginning to build up their own databases to be integrated with those currently in existence. Established laws have already created widely accessible databases with extensive amounts of information on registered offenders. In Pennsylvania, registered sex offenders' names, photos, and addresses can be found by anyone with access to the internet at _____. The convicted persons can be searched for by their names or simply by the geographic area they live in.

While the Web site publishes a disclaimer that the information is only to be used for "community safety purposes" and not for intimidation or harassment, objectors claim that making this information so readily available poses more problems, especially the "unconstitutional" addition of punishment via public shame.

Organizations like the ACLU are quick to point out that these concerns could only be aggravated by the addition of a database of iris scans. They suggest that police could potentially use the iris scanning technology to quickly access individuals' information, then decide how to proceed in various situations based on knowledge of past criminal records.

Quick to point out the potential for parallels between our law enforcement agencies and those depicted in Steven Spielberg's 2002 film "Minority Report," critics of iris scanning are wary of the many ways in which such technology could be abused to the detriment of convicted criminals and ordinary citizens alike.

As such technology is adopted more widely, the question of how much individual privacy Americans are willing to give up in favor of open information rises to the forefront, as it seems to with nearly all recently-developed security measures. ..News Source.. by Karrin Randle