Driver’s License Emerges as Crime-Fighting Tool, but Privacy Advocates Worry

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/us/17face.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin


February 17, 2007

Driver’s License Emerges as Crime-Fighting Tool, but Privacy Advocates Worry

By ADAM LIPTAK

BOSTON, Feb. 12 — On the second floor of a state office building here, upstairs from a food court, three facial-recognition specialists are revolutionizing American law enforcement. They work for the Massachusetts motor vehicles department.

Last year they tried an experiment, for sport. Using computerized biometric technology, they ran a mug shot from the Web site of “America’s Most Wanted,” the Fox Network television show, against the state’s database of nine million digital driver’s license photographs.

The computer found a match. A man who looked very much like Robert Howell, the fugitive in the mug shot, had a Massachusetts driver’s license under another name. Mr. Howell was wanted in Massachusetts on rape charges.

The analysts passed that tip along to the police, who tracked him down to New York City, where he was receiving welfare benefits under the alias on the driver’s license. Mr. Howell was arrested in October.

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