US retains private biometric data on millions of Iraqis

THE US military may have pulled out of Iraq, but they leave with a massive database of biometric information on over three million Iraqis, Wired magazine reports. Retinal scans, thumb prints and other data gathered during the mission will remain US property and will not be shared with the Iraqi government.
 
The database has been built up over years as part of counter-terrorism efforts, designed to identify and track insurgents. As Wired reports, "Residents of violent cities like Fallujah would only get to return home from travel if they showed US troops an ID card complete with biometric data."
 
The system offered the Americans several benefits. It effectively took a census of the population and enabled the discovery of double agents, while bombs and weapons could be swabbed for fingerprints to identify suspects.
 
There are no available figures for the number of insurgents caught this way, but a similar system in Afghanistan results in 20-25 arrests a week, military officials estimate.
 
However, the system will now be of limited use in Iraq as the US is unwilling to open its database to Iraqi authorities. US Central Command chief spokesman Major T.G. Taylor refused to comment on the reason for this, although he told Wired: "We still have an interest there in helping our Iraqi partners, and that information might be helpful to them should there be any issues."
 
The news has provoked anger among Arab commentators. On Iran's Press TV today, political activist Dahlia Wasfi said the US database will be used "to maintain control of the Iraqi population", and complained that the US security agencies are in "violation of so many domestic and international laws".

With approximately ten per cent of Iraq's population covered by the data, there are fears that in the wrong hands – a partisan militia or an insurgent group - it could be dynamite.

The gathering of biometric data is a legal grey area, according to James Andrew Lewis, a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
 
"The governance of biometric data for identification and for security is under-developed, in part because it cuts across organisational and national boundaries", writes Lewis. "The US will need to articulate rules for how biometric data can be used and shared. There are great benefits for identification purposes [but] to realise these benefits, the collection and use of biometric data must be governed by rules and safeguards that balance national security with privacy rights and civil liberties."
 
Last year, Wikileaks revealed that the US had been spying on foreign heads of state and top UN diplomats, in an effort to acquire DNA samples and other biometric information. ·