Ghana carried out their December 7 general elections using biometric identification verification on voters consisting of fingerprint scans and facial recognition images. Notably, and perhaps hypocritically, California (and other states) record all resident’s thumbprints and facial recognition images, yet California has recently outlawed voter ID.
In addition to Ghana, Venezuela, Ivory Coast, Edo State, Nigeria, Iraq and likely many more third world countries fingerprint voters.
While biometrics are effective at identifying individuals, once compromised they cannot be changed. Ironically, and possibly humorously, an article by How-To-Geek actually recommends scanning ‘even more’ biometrics to ‘combat’ this.
“During the [Ghana] general elections of last Saturday December 7, biometrics played an important role – from voter registration, database deduplication as well as bi-modal biometric verification (face and fingerprints) of the 18.3 million registered voters who were eligible to be verified biometrically on election day,” Biometric Update said Monday.
This was not the first election in Ghana to use biometrics, however.
Regarding the legal landscape of biometric deployment in the U.S. however, under the Fourth Amendment, citizen are protected against unreasonable searches and seizures.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment said.
While this constitutional protection does not pertain to an arrestee or those undergoing a background check, per state and U.S. Code, there is a valid constitutional debate as to if subjecting all citizens to this warrantless biometric collection (which can be used in a search) violates the Fourth Amendment.
“Fingerprints, palmprints, and impressions of bare soles have been widely recognized and accepted as a reliable means to identify a person. A reproduction of the friction ridge arrangements on a fingerprint, palmprint, or footprint may be left on an object when it is touched. This permits the impression to be used for the personal identification of individuals in criminal investigations,” the U.S. Office of Justice Programs said in the document ‘Fingerprints And The Law‘. “Thus, the forensic science of fingerprints, palmprints, and footprints is utilized by law enforcement agencies in support of their investigations to positively identify the perpetrator of a crime. This forensic science is also used for exculpatory or elimination purposes.”
Biometrics which are collected due to engagement in civil activity from all or nearly all members of society, and not due to arrest or warranted order, being subjected to warrantless database searches is a Fourth Amendment conflict. Even if each and every search of a biometric database is conducted under the order of a warrant, such a warrant may be classified as a general warrant and not a specific, limited search warrant allowed under the U.S. Constitution, as every scanned-individuals biometrics are searched in the database. Geofencing warrants are currently facing this debate. General warrants issued by Britain were a contentious issue with the American colonialists, giving rise to the protections of the Fourth Amendment.
Other individuals have made arguments counter to this thesis, however.
Regarding the debate as to the constitutionality of warrantless biometric deployment against the general population, the University of California San Francisco hosts a document published in 2006 by the Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal titled ‘Catching up to Our Biometric Future: Fourth Amendment Privacy Rights and Biometric Identification Technology’ which analyzed court precedent and statute regarding the issue. Note that author of the document is Rudy Ng, any views and analysis given in his work are his, not Infowars’. The document also addressed the issue in 2006 and as such only contains information up until that point.
“In order for biometric identification methods to pass muster under the Fourth Amendment, they must be reasonable. In determining whether a search is reasonable, a court must balance the extent of the intrusion on an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights against the government’s legitimate interests in effectuating the search. In addition, reasonableness depends on the circumstances in which biometric identification is used,” Catching up to Our Biometric Future: Fourth Amendment Privacy Rights and Biometric Identification Technology said on page 434. “The government may have compelling interests in certain areas, such as providing for secure air travel, which argues in favor of the promotion of biometric identification systems in airports. However, it is less clear how significant an interest the government may have in other areas, such as achieving secure ATM transactions or identifying convicted felons from a crowd of people. These concerns are only magnified in light of the advances in biometric technology which make it easier to surreptitiously collect biometric data, such as face recognition images.”
According to the perspective and analysis of Rudy Ng in his law journal document, a ‘compelling interest’ of the government ‘justifies’ an intrusion on an individual’s Fourth Amendment, at least according to his opinion. Interestingly, voter identification for elections is not even mentioned once in his 17-page paper.
Perhaps surprisingly, the author goes on to make his case that’s since biometrics can be viewed publicly, where no expectation of privacy is allotted, biometrics are not covered by Fourth Amendment protections. Again, that is Rudy Ng’s opinion.
“Although the use of biometrics such as iris scanning and face recognition technology has not been addressed by the Court, the analytical framework established by Katz can be applied to the use of emerging biometric technology. Keeping in line with its previous holdings, the Court would most likely hold that an individual should have no expectation of privacy while in a public place. Individuals who are out in public places have chosen to expose themselves to the public, whether it be to other people or to surveillance cameras enabled with face recognition technology,” Catching up to Our Biometric Future: Fourth Amendment Privacy Rights and Biometric Identification Technology said on page 435. “In addition, it is likely that modern society’s increased desire to protect public safety would outweigh individuals’ privacy interests when they are in public.’ Thus, future face recognition and iris scanning technologies fall short of constituting an unreasonable search under the Court’s current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Therefore, the government should be free to use these types of biometric technology in public places without violating an individual’s constitutional privacy rights.”
Regardless of if one agrees or disagrees with Ng’s personal analysis and deductions, it should be noted that many U.S. states do not have voter ID laws. To that point, the President (who is ‘voted’ in) has the sole discretion and authority to deploy the use of nuclear weapons, a potentially world-ending power.
Under the surveillance-state-oriented opinions of Rudy Ng (that biometrics may be collected from the general public due to a compelling government interest and lack of Fourth Amendment protections) the lack of any form of voter ID in numerous states, biometric or otherwise, should be notable. It should also be pointed out that effective voter ID policies need not utilize biometrics at all.
Facing little pushback, except by those promoting human liberty, many programs in the U.S. currently utilize big-brother-style biometrics for more trivial activities such as gym memberships, school lunch programs, medical clinic sign-ins and amusement park admission, just to name a few. To that end, a lack of basic voter ID laws (such as showing a drivers license to vote) is not an oversight, a sign of liberty or a move toward a legitimately-constitutional American government.
While basic (non-biometric) voter ID laws are being eschewed in the U.S., the globalist New World Order-types are establishing population control systems utilizing comprehensive biometric collection protocols in a push toward a digital ID panopticonic control grid where every human activity is tracked, traced and categorized, except for, perhaps, their votes.
Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement