LA County: Stop and Scan

The Pasadena Weekly has just published an article purporting to describe LA County's plans to populate the FBI's next generation ID system with data gathered in the field.

On Sept. 15, the FBI announced that the Next Generation Identification System was fully operational. Now that the central infrastructure is in place, the next phase is for local jurisdictions across the country to update their own information-gathering systems to the FBI’s standards.

When the system is up and running in L.A., any law enforcement official working in the county, including the Los Angeles Police Department, would collect biometric information on people who are booked into county jails or by using mobile devices in the field.

This would occur even when people are stopped for lesser offenses or pulled over for minor traffic violations, according to documents obtained by The Center for Investigative Reporting through a public records request.

Officials with the Sheriff’s Department, which operates the countywide system, said the biometric information would be retained indefinitely — regardless of whether the person in question is convicted of the crime for which he or she was arrested.

If this report is corroborated, I suspect we'll be hearing a lot more about this.