According to The Verge, the collection of iris on individuals kicked off as a pilot experiment but since has grown like Topsy.

The data is shared with the US Border Patrol as well as the Pentagon but there hasn’t been any public debate on whether privacy is being breached,

According to data collected by The Verge, the FBI has built a searchable database of people that have been arrested.

The FBI’s national database links the iris scan to fingerprints and to photographs. So far the agency hasn’t made an assessment of the privacy problems that building this kind of database involves.

The Verge collected much of the data from the California Public Records Act but suggests that the number of iris scans collected is likely to grow exponentially as other states and jurisdictions buy into the system.

There’s no word yet of whether the iris database could be shared with other US allies, such as the United Kingdom or other NATO countries.