First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance
by Annie Jacobsen
View on GoodreadsIn 2012, 82nd Airborne paratroopers in Afghanistan were collecting fingerprints, iris scans and DNA from civilians and dead combatants for a Pentagon database meant to cover about 80 percent of the population. Jacobsen follows one platoon from that deployment to its leader's murder conviction and a 2019 presidential pardon.
Core ideas
- Disputed evidence: The defense argued biometric data tied one of the Afghan men 1st Lt. Clint Lorance ordered shot to IEDs, a claim the Army appeals court rejected.
- An old idea: One strand traces biometric identification from late-19th-century fingerprinting through DNA and facial recognition.
- It comes home: Tens of millions of profiles sit at a Defense and Justice Department facility in West Virginia, and the tools are spreading to civilians in the United States.
Published2021
Pages399
ISBN9781524746681
ReadMay 2024
