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fliptop writes:

The shoebox-shaped device, designed to capture fingerprints and perform iris scans, was listed on eBay for $149.95. A German security researcher, Matthias Marx, successfully offered $68, and when it arrived at his home in Hamburg in August, the rugged, hand-held machine contained more than what was promised in the listing:

The device's memory card held the names, nationalities, photographs, fingerprints and iris scans of 2,632 people.

Most people in the database, which was reviewed by The New York Times, were from Afghanistan and Iraq. Many were known terrorists and wanted individuals, but others appeared to be people who had worked with the U.S. government or simply been stopped at checkpoints. Metadata on the device, called a Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit, or SEEK II, revealed that it had last been used in the summer of 2012 near Kandahar, Afghanistan.

[...] The biometric data on the SEEK II was collected at detainment facilities, on patrols, during screenings of local hires and after the explosion of an improvised bomb. Around the time when the device was last used in Afghanistan, the American war effort there was winding down. Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan a year earlier — his identity reportedly confirmed using facial recognition technology.

Mr. Marx planned to present his findings at an event for hackers in Berlin on Tuesday. After the analysis of the biometric devices is complete, he and his fellow researchers plan to delete the personally identifiable data.

Original Submission