Unbelievable. How are we different from Nazi Germany again? Oh yeah, we're not.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-07-12-database-inside_N.htmIdentification effort crosses entire war zone<snip>
The U.S. military is increasingly combating the Iraqi insurgency with a non-lethal yet effective weapon: identification. U.S. troops are creating a database with hundreds of thousands of records of Iraqi adult males, which they can use to conduct quick background checks and identify potential troublemakers.
"The biggest problem we have in Iraq is separating insurgents from the population," said Owen West, who served two Iraq tours as a Marine major and has advocated the use of biometric data to identify Iraqis. "Once you can identify someone, you can begin to crack the insurgent network as the police would crack a gang."
Fingerprints and iris scans — known as biometric data — form the foundation for reliable identification records. Iraqis are added to the database when they are determined to be insurgents, found near attack sites or detained. Other Iraqis have been scanned at their homes, their workplaces, or at checkpoints.
Iraq has no other reliable government-issued identification system. Many Iraqis carry fake IDs with last names that suggest a sectarian background other than their own — a method of survival in a country where violence between Sunnis and Shiites has killed thousands since the war began.
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The effort mirrors tactics used by U.S. police to identify gang members, Musa said.
The military also has taken biometric records to do background checks of Iraqis working at U.S. bases and of most of the 350,000 Iraqi police and soldiers.
"It started with base access, but then the military began to awaken to the idea that there are a lot of other things you can do, especially if you encounter individuals who commit crimes," said John Young, Pentagon director of defense research and engineering.
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Congress allocated $360 million in May to improve connections so troops have "near-real-time capability to positively identify" Iraqis on the street, said Maka, the Pentagon spokesman. The money also will improve collection of fingerprints taken from attack sites.
The effort to identify law-abiding Iraqis has accelerated since March, when Baghdad-area soldiers began building on a Marine effort that started in 2004 in Anbar province, which was a hotbed for the Sunni insurgency.
In Anbar province, Marines have taken biometrics of hundreds of thousands of males between ages 16 and 65, given them ID cards and set up checkpoints around cities such as Fallujah. People without cards faced tougher checkpoint screening, Marine Lt. Col. Jeff Smitherman said. Recently, the Fallujah government has barred any non-resident from entering.
Those with expired or soon-to-expire cards were sent for renewals at a nearby tent where Rigney, the Marine corporal, checked on Salaman and his expiring ID.
Alerted by Rigney's e-mail, Marines at a nearby command post ran a check on Salaman and found nothing beyond the alleged assault from 2005 that resulted in his detention for three months without being charged.
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