NOVANEWS
Posted by JacobSloan
There’s no law requiring an iris scan if the police cuff you — it’s just “policy.” From the Village Voice:
But protesters and their legal advisers were surprised yesterday to learn that the size of their bail was being affected by whether defendants were willing to have the distinctive patterns of their irises photographed and logged into a database.
The idea of the state collecting distinctive biometric information from people who haven’t even been charged with a crime yet, much less convicted of one, makes civil libertarians nervous. Unlike fingerprints, no law was ever passed to require iris photographs — it’s just a policy.
