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Bio Metrics and The US Gov and YOU
Bio Metrics and The US Gov and YOU
Biometrics Agency
March 29th, 2010 by Steven Aftergood
As of last week, there is now a U.S. Government national security agency called the Biometrics
Identity Management Agency (BIMA). It supersedes a Biometrics Task Force that was
established in 2000.
Though nominally a component of the Army, the biometrics agency has Defense Department-
wide responsibilities.
“Biometric data [are] normally unclassified,” according to a 2008 DoD directive (pdf).
“However, elements of the contextual data, information associated with biometric collection,
and/or associated intelligence analysis may be classified.”
“Biometrics is an important enabler that shall be fully integrated into the conduct of DoD
activities to support the full range of military operations,” the 2008 directive stated.
“Every day thousands of [biometric] records are collected and sent to the Department of Defense
(DOD) Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) to store and compare against existing
records,” a 2009 DoD report (pdf) said. “The technology is improving such that a submission
from theater [e.g., in Afghanistan] can be searched in the DOD ABIS and a response sent back to
theater in less than two minutes.”
“Realtime positive identification of persons of interest enables Coalition forces to target, track,
and prosecute known or potential adversaries,” the DoD report said.