Feds have a focus on the threat from within. I would like to thank Ned from the NSA for the photo.
Via Defense One
In 2005, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the man today considered the leader of the Islamic State of Syria in the Levant, or ISIL, fell into the custody of United States forces in Iraq. A U.S. soldier subjected him to a finger and iris scan using the Biometrics Automated Toolsets System or BATS, a laptop with device peripherals hanging off to the side. That soldier also would have entered a few other biographical details like name, origin and occupation, etc., into the system. Shortly after that, Baghdadi was sent to Camp Bucca where he would have been photographed, possibly five times, from the front, the side and at angles. Someone would have taken down his height, weight and any visible scars on his body. Baghdadi would live under U.S. custody at Bucca for another 4 years before his 2009 release whereupon he uttered the now famous warning to his captors: “I’ll see you guys in New York.”
Today, Baghdadi has a $10 million bounty on his head. Military leaders and TIME magazine consider him to be the “most dangerous man in the world.” In the ongoing effort to identify and find the leaders of ISIL, a requirement to taking out the group’s leadership with air strikes, Baghdadi stands out as the most potentially valuable military target on the planet. He may be in Syria now, or Iraq, but probably not far from there. “He’s a hometown boy,” said Patrick Skinner, a former CIA analyst who was in Iraq at the time of Baghdadi’s capture. With Baghdadi in the hands of the U.S. for so long, with such ample opportunity to gather clues, signatures, data, why doesn’t the U.S. know how to find him, now?
That answer has many parts but one is that, according to Skinner, the U.S. simply didn’t collect much biometric data on Baghdadi when officials had the chance. In fact, the U.S. government probably has more biometric information on you than one of the most infamous terrorist masterminds alive.