I am concerned with privacy. I actively take measures to ensure that the privacy of myself and my family is maintained.

I think that people should have the option to opt-out of things like this. When we agree to have our drivers license photo taken it will presumably only be used to identify that I am the person driving a vehicle. It is not implied that this photo will be used as a comparison tool.

If people were given the opportunity to opt-out of this, I would be perfectly fine with my photo being used in the database. I would want to make sure that only the FBI had permission to use my photo in a database like this. If my photo could be used to identify and locate a criminal, then I'd want to help.

Often, the problem with privacy issues such as these is that they are clouded with partial or mis-information. The MSNBC article gives such a brief, sensational overview of this topic that it would be easy for people to become concerned with their privacy. More than privacy concerns, this level of incomplete news bothers me. We live in a hyperlinked world. Why couldn't have MSNBC properly sourced, validated and linked to a complete FBI issued source of information on this topic?

I like this, ""Most of the facial-recognition systems today are built on state DMV records because that's where the good photos are. It's not where the terrorists are.""

A quote from the article.

That old saying, "If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about..." no longer holds true in America.

Like Rob, I too care about my family's freedom and privacy. I'm a little scared where I'm seeing things go after the wake of 9/11. Of course, it was all poised prior to that to go that way, but there needed to be an impetus to push it over the edge, so when 9/11 happened, that made it all start rolling and like any avalanche, it picks up bits and pieces of debris along the way, but keeps getting bigger and bigger.

This reminds me of this video...

..which I love by the way. Towards the end they talk about microchips installed under the skin as being the next step to "national id's" and the desire to upload it all into a hive mind. *shivers* To me our privacy has already been compromised. A satellite can already zoom in to me picking my nose, the government can already locate me from my cell phone, I've even been "chipped" so to speak as I carry a US passport and was once living on a foreign military base (finger printing facial scans etc.)

Though I wouldn't want to participate in this program I don't see our government making that an option. We were once a free country, we are now a police state.

Edits to attempt to get that video to show... I'll just have to use the broken in half version from Youtube I guess, my original won't show here.