[Image: Scans of an inmate’s eyes appear on a computer monitor attached to an identification system scanner on Feb. 24, 2010 at the Story County Jail in Nevada, Iowa.] Once complete, the Los Angeles Sheriff Department’s database of biometric data will be the largest ID system outside of the FBI.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved $24 million in state funds for the LA Sheriff’s Department (LASD) to get new identification technology that would include palm prints, face recognition, iris scans, and voice recordings, in addition to fingerprints.

The money was allocated for the county to use over the next ten years. Lieutenant Joshua Thai is in charge of implementing the new Multimodal Biometric Identification System (MBIS).

He says the Sheriff’s Department will not be collecting data from the average citizen, only those who are booked in a county jail and arrested. Thai says the additional data will make the current 12-year-old fingerprinting system more accurate.

“The fingerprint software does not detect your fingerprints. It really doesn’t know what that is, but there’s algorithms and mathematic calculations based on what you have, and then [you] fuse all that together to get the best score to identify that person,” said Thai.

A person’s identity may also be checked against the database with a mobile device while officers are in the field, similar to fingerprint devices they’ve been using since 2006.