Articles
Military Prison Builds Big Afghan Biometric Database
By Spencer Ackerman | August 25, 2010
BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Don’t think of the U.S. military’s new Detention Facility In Parwan as just a holding pen for suspected insurgents. It’s also an emerging datafarm, storing biometric information on its inmate population. In a country with a shaky commitment to the rule of law, those identifiers could become weapons.
Parwan, with its thousand-or-so detainee population, will become an Afghan-run detention complex next year. By 2014, it’ll become a major Afghan jail, run by the Ministry of Justice to incarcerate convicted criminals, not hold insurgents taken off the battlefield. But Army Brigadier General Mark Martins, who currently runs day-to-day operations at the detention center, explains that there’s a basic problem with Afghanistan’s criminal justice system: It doesn’t have a efficient information infrastructure to identify the people it holds. That’s where he comes in.
Every detainee who comes into Parwan leaves basic information with the Detainee Services Branch during in-processing: Name; father’s name; residence. A mark of any identifying scars, marks or tattoos. Residence of record. After a shower and a medical exam, the DSB scans their irises and collects prints from all of their fingers, rolling their thumbs for a 360-degree view. Its cameras snap five photographs of every detainee’s face. All of this information goes into a military database called the Automated Biometric Information System.
Troops in the field can access the system through a set of portable consoles that the DSB has on hand. The Biometrics Automated Toolset, or BAT, allows troops who detain insurgents on the battlefield to get a quick biometric identification of who they’ve captured, all through talking to the database. One clunky component of it, the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection System (HIIDE), which looks like a big black FunSaver, takes pictures of a captive’s irises, facial features and fingerprints. BATS and HIIDE were used in Iraq, where counterinsurgents like David Kilcullen praised the devices for allowing troops to quickly and positively identify known insurgents during the surge.
But any detective will tell you that a database is only as good as the data it contains. And after 30 years of war, Afghanistan isn’t really in the data-collection game. The U.S. military’s detentions command, known as Joint Task Force-435, is working with the Afghan Ministry of Interior to kick-start an up-to-date records program.
Martins says he and the ministry want “enrollments on 15 percent of fighting-age males,” Afghans between the ages of 14 and 49. Studies that he’s seen convince him that 15 percent represents a Gladwellian tipping point, allowing the U.S. and the Afghans to match exponentially more latent fingerprints off homemade bombs to Afghans in the system.
But that means biometric information about one million people. And the easiest way to get this information is by locking up a whole lot of Afghans and collecting it against their will, one of the reasons that human rights advocates are wary about the U.S.’s plans to turn over Parwan to the Afghans.
In Iraq, privacy advocates raised similar concerns about weaponizing the biometrics database — essentially, turning it into a military hit list. Afghanistan is filled with corruption, fraud and malicious police officers. Its commitment to the rule of law is, to be charitable, immature. In such a circumstance, a counterinsurgency tool like the biometric database just as easily become predatory, allowing its possessors to take out their political or ethnic rivals and reward their allies. If theWikiLeaks disclosures put Afghans in danger, imagine what iris scans and fingerprints could mean for people who don’t want to pay bribes to crooked cops.
“That’s a policy-significant issue,” Martins admits, “Who holds the data?” According to an October memorandum signed by the U.S. and Afghan governments, the Afghans will. The U.S. might see its collected records become the “biometric component of a national ID” Martins says, good for property ownership records, establishing credit lines and other economic behavior. But first, the biometrics database will be “MOI’s data,” in the hands of the security services — the legacy of ten years of U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan.
Credit: DoD Biometrics
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Seven arrests in Ratanak Kiri fake uniforms case
The Phnom Penh Post
Chrann Chamroeun and Mom Kunthear
Police arrest group after catching one suspect wearing a fake two-star general’s uniform
SEVEN people were sent to Ratanakkiri provincial court on Wednesday after they were found with forged government documents and fake military police uniforms, a provincial military police chief told the Post.
Tuy Sim, Ratanakkiri provincial Military Police chief, said his officials had arrested the group after one of its members was caught wearing a fake general’s uniform.
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…when he began to panic they suspected him and took them to the police station.
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“Our men had lunch with [one of the suspects] and he was wearing casual clothes, and then later in the day they saw him wearing a two-star general’s military police uniform travelling to a pagoda in a Mitsubishi car with six other people,” Tuy Sim said.
He added that upon raiding the car, police found a gun, four other uniforms and forged documents, including one with the signature of Prime Minister Hun Sen and another that was signed by Minister of Agriculture Chan Sarun.
“They asked him for his name and which unit he came from, and when he began to panic, they suspected him and took them to the police station,” he said.
Illegal logging suspected
Pen Bonnar, provincial coordinator for the rights group Adhoc, told the Post Wednesday that he welcomed the arrests because he believed the group was likely involved in illegal logging.
“I request that authorities further investigate the group, as we have found that a lot of people who have fake police uniforms and forged documents are involved in illegal logging.”
Police repeatedly arrest innocent woman due to mistaken identity
by Adam Walser
The criminals new joy with Biometrics is, once you’ve fool the system, your faked fingerprint is made of the same stuff as fruit pastilles, so you can simply dress the evidence on other innocent victim, without letting the victim any chance to hold himself blameless.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) — A Louisville woman says she was arrested by police, thrown in jail and went to court for crimes she never committed three times in the last year and a half because of her name. The woman’s name is Melissa Ann Richardson, but she’s not the only woman with that name in Louisville. Richardson says another Melissa Ann Richardson has been getting in lots of trouble and doesn’t show up for court, which is making her life increasingly difficult.
Whenever Melissa Ann Richardson leaves home, she has to have lots of documentation proving that she’s Melissa Ann Richardson because recently she’s been confused with a different Melissa Ann Richardson. She is also white, has brown hair, green eyes and an October birthday. The difference is that Melissa Ann Richardson has been arrested dozens of times for prostitution and drugs. “I don’t see any resemblance and that’s just because I don’t want to be affiliated in any way with prostitution,” said Richardson.
The other Melissa Ann Richardson also has an unfortunate habit of not showing up for court. Twice last year, Melissa Ann Richardson was arrested, booked and had to go to court for the other woman’s crimes. “They told me that it was done. They typed everything in. The clerk said ‘Okay, we’re sorry. It won’t happen again,’” said Richardson. However, on Friday, Richardson said it happened again.
She was stopped at a red light in a minivan in West Louisville when a police officer pulled her over and questioned her. After checking her ID, the officer arrested Richardson on charges she says belong to the other woman. The other Melissa Ann Richardson apparently even gave officers the first Melissa Ann’s date of birth when she was arrested so it was back to jail.
“Usually it’s only been about eight hours. This past weekend, it was the worst of it. It was 33 hours,” Richardson said. Police say the mix-ups can happen because right now, pictures aren’t placed on e-warrants, which are displayed on officers’ laptop computers so police rely on the information they’re given. A Louisville Metro Corrections Department spokesperson says it’s standard procedure to use a fingerprint scan on all prisoners who are booked. It’s unclear as to what happened in the latest case.
As for Richardson, she’ll keep carrying her makeshift purse. “Thank you for not believing me, but I’m out. And if you arrest me again, I’m gonna get out again. But this time, I’m pursuing a different angle. I’ve called our attorney and we’re gonna go that route,” Richardson said.
Late this afternoon, we learned that part of the problem at the jail is that the records for both Melissa Ann Richardsons were apparently merged, leading them to believe they had the right suspect over the weekend.
We tried to locate the other Melissa Ann Richardson to talk to her about the situation today, but like the police, we weren’t able to find her.