A group of 45 civil rights and privacy advocates have said the FBI's biometric database, known as the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, could jeopardise privacy norms in the US.The move comes after the FBI moved to exempt the system from an incoming privacy regulation, arguing that this could endanger national security and anti-crime efforts.The NGI system uses some of the most advanced surveillance technologies known to humankind to create a database with records of millions of US citizens, many of whom are innocent, a civil rights coalition stated in a May 27 letter to the Department of Justice.The coalition is “deeply concerned” about the NGI system, and has urged the Department of Justice to grant the public 30 more days to comment on the FBI's request and the underlying system that it is designed to protect.”If the FBI is allowed to get this exemption, not only will we be unable to monitor and correct this racially biased database, but the FBI would be able to again run illegal spy programs COINTELPRO [that targeted the US civil rights movement in the 1960s],” colorofchange.org activists said in a press release.The Justice Department Agency plans to propose that the Next Generation Identification System (NGI) be free from certain provisions of the Privacy Act. The new law requires that federal agencies share information about the records they collect with the individual subject of those records, allowing them to verify and correct them if needed.However, the FBI doesn't want the US public to access information about the palm prints, fingerprints, iris scans, facial and tattoo photographs being stored in NGI. Specifically, the agency is concerned that the exemptions are needed to “prevent interference with the FBI's mission to detect, deter, and prosecute crimes and to protect the national security, which includes the use of criminal history record information and biometric identifiers.”

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