Jay Stanley of the ACLU has a commentary in the UK’s Guardian:
The FBI recently announced that its Next Generation Identification System (NGIS) has “reached its initial operating capacity”. This vast new biometrics project, for which Lockheed Martin won a $1bn contract in 2008, encompasses not only fingerprints but also, possibly, such biometrics as iris scans, face recognition, bodily scars, marks and tattoos.
Such a system raises a number of concerns from a civil liberties perspective. Many types of biometrics are of particular concern because they allow individuals to be tracked secretly and at a distance. For instance, facial recognition may allow a person to be tracked by various CCTV cameras across a city. Worse, in the future, this may be automated and done by computers.
Read more in The Guardian.