Well, looks like the time has come after three years of development. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system that we spoke about in April is fully operational and includes a controversial feature known as Interstate Photo System (IPS). IPS is facial recognition that allows agents to search photographs of people with criminal backgrounds.

The controversy comes from privacy groups as the FBI is mixing traditional mug shot photos with non-criminal photographs obtained from employment records and background check databases. Remember that they system is supposed to collect as many as 52 million photographs by 2015?

I’m not so much worried about this database of photos as I am about the system’s low rate of success. For any given face, NGI produces a list of 50 possible matches, promising only an 85% chance that the suspect will be one of the matches as law enforcement groups across the U.S. will soon begin working with the NGI system.

Wonder how many cases of mistaken identity the future holds?