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American soldiers in Iraq have collected fingerprints, iris scans, and DNA from ordinary people and suspected insurgents. The effort has helped amass one of the world’s most comprehensive databases of biometric information collected during a war. Now, the collection of so much personal information has raised questions about how data should be used. Clark Boyd reports. Download MP3

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MARCO WERMAN: When US combat troops left Iraq, they left behind a lot of biometric records. More than a million of them. Those records include things like fingerprints and iris scans. Here’s more from The World’s technology correspondent Clark Boyd.

CLARK BOYD:  US forces started collecting biometric data in Iraq in the violent aftermath of the invasion in 2003. The idea was to use those records to identify potential insurgents and to help in tracking down makers of IEDs or suicide vests. And the goal was straightforward. To try to keep US troops, and Iraqi citizens, safe.

NASEER NOURI:  I don’t blame them for doing that at that time.

BOYD: Naseer Nouri worked as a correspondent for the Washington Post in Baghdad during the US occupation. Nouri says that it wasn’t just suspected insurgents who got printed or scanned. For example, any Iraqi like himself who worked for a US press outlet, or for an American NGO or for the military or the US embassy, also got their measurements taken by US forces.

NOURI: They were able to get information, and that is – about even civilians, without their permission because it’s a war, there were terrorists, so they had the right to do that.

BOYD: For example, in Fallujah, a pivotal flash point for violence, anyone entering or leaving the city had to be scanned. The Pentagon built a sizable database of Iraqi iris scans and fingerprints over the years. They even went back and helped the Iraqis digitize old fingerprint records from the Saddam Hussein era. Noah Schachtman was in Iraq a few years ago covering the war for Wired magazine. He’s now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Schachtman remembers one incident in Fallujah.

NOAH SCHACHTMAN: I remember being at a police recruiting session in Fallujah a couple of years ago. And everybody who signed up as a police recruit got their iris zapped. And it turned out that a bunch of the recruits had previously gotten their irises scanned as detainees and insurgents. So, that had to be explained, and a couple of guys went back to being detainees.

BOYD: Some biometric data has also served as solid forensic evidence. A fingerprint lifted from the site of a roadside bomb can potentially be matched with someone in the database. Jim Lewis directs the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He says biometrics are a very powerful tool.

JIM LEWIS: If you can identify who it is that built the roadside bomb, that’s a tremendous advantage. It doesn’t always work, and sometimes there’s a little bit of luck involved. But it’s a way to figure out who are the guys that make the suicide vests, who are the guys that are making the roadside bombs. And getting them to stop doing what they’re doing is really a big help.

BOYD: But now that the US has finished combat operations in Iraq, the question is this. What happens to all that biometric data? The Pentagon says it will share it with the Iraqi authorities. The remaining US forces will continue to train Iraqi troops in how to collect and analyze that data. Its part and parcel, the Pentagon says, of letting the Iraqis take care of their own security. But Noah Schachtman says there are potential downsides.

SCHACHTMAN:  There’s a fear that if sectarian tensions really bubble over, that biometric database could become a kind of hit list. Because it matches faces to names, and because names respond to tribes and religious affiliations, that biometric database could prove to be something really bad. A sort of way to target enemies.

BOYD: US military officials say that people’s tribal and religious affiliations have been stripped out of the records handed over to the Iraqis. But Naseer Nouri, who now lives in Washington and helps run a resettlement program for Iraqis, says that’s not enough.

NOURI: Everyone knows that the Iraqi police, or Iraqi military or the Iraqi government are infiltrated by people who work for those insurgents or the militias. That information will be very helpful for them to chase those people who worked for US military or their families. I believe it will be like kind of revenge attacks.

BOYD: Nouri says he fled to the US precisely because he was worried that someone would try to hurt him, or his family, because he’d worked for a US news outlet. He says that many Iraqis feel let down by the US government.

NOURI: It’s just like they betrayed them. They trust the US government, and give that information, and now they’re forwarding that information to the Iraqi government without their permission.

BOYD: Many think it would be a mistake, though, to stop using the technology. In an article written last year, a top US official working on biometrics put it this way: “These technologies are enabling the Department of Defense to identify and detain suspected terrorists, improving citizen security both at home and away.” Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International studies cautions, though, that any country collecting biometric data has to answer some tough legal questions.

LEWIS: Can the Army share with the domestic police? Can they share with another country? If they share it, what uses can it to be put to? Can it be used for terrorism, or can it be used for parking fines? How does it get introduced into a court? What authorities do you collect it under? How long can you store it? So, sharing, storage, use, we’re going to need to refine the rules for them.

BOYD: These kinds of tricky legal issues will only grow in the years to come, especially for the United States. In Afghanistan, US troops are collecting similar kinds of biometric data. In all, the Pentagon has collected some 4 million records worldwide. Forty percent of them, for now, are Iraqi. For The World, this is Clark Boyd.

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