Public Safety

Biometrics use raises civil liberties concerns

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BY LACEE SHEPARD
Capital News Service
LANSING – A recent U.S Supreme Court decision on DNA testing has raised concerns among civil liberties advocates about the use of biometrics in police work. In Maryland case, a suspect was arrested and had his cheek swabbed to collect a DNA sample. After the sample connected him to rape case, he was convicted of that crime instead of the unrelated assault charge he was arrested on. “They took the guy’s DNA sample under the impression that they needed to ID and fingerprint him,” said Devin Schindler, a constitutional law professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Grand Rapids. “They tested his DNA sample against the database and found he was a suspect in a rape case.”

Government

New technologies help police ID crooks

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By YANJIE WANG
Capital News Service
LANSING — Be careful. If you have a criminal record, are pulled over by police and happen not to have a driver’s license, you might be identified in a minute through a mobile fingerprint device. And someday your body odor and voice may be near-immediate give-aways of your true identity. So called biometric technology, including fingerprint recognition, is not something new since it’s been used since the 1980s. But the 1-1/2-year old Biometrics and Identification Division of the State Police makes Michigan the first state to have a separate office working on criminal justice biometrics.