Scan This: Better than Fingerprinting?

There is a technology that has been readily available for roughly fifteen years that allows for an almost full-proof identification of people. However, rather than using a person’s fingerprints, this technology scans people’s eyes to map the iris. The technology is somewhat under-utilized because it has yet to reach an economy of scale, which would allow it to be more cost-effective. That may soon change because the National Sheriff’s Association is shoveling out $10,000 grants to about different 45 law-enforcement agencies around the country in hope that it creates a national database to better identify prison inmates and people suspected of crimes.

The reason the association is making such a move is due to an all too common occurrence: mistaken identities of inmates who are also mistakenly released. In an article published by NPR, the incident of a Baltimore inmate was used as an example. The inmate impersonated his cell mate and was then mistakenly released. It is almost certain that had the agency utilized an eye-scanner, the mistake would not have been made.

The eye-scanning program boasts several benefits. Among them is processing speed and accuracy. First, identifying a person via their iris would return results almost instantaneously. Fingerprints, on the other hand, can take hours or even days to return results with a reasonable amount of certainty. Second, the iris is so unique from person to person because it contains about six times more features than a fingerprint. Therefore, iris scanning is not only just as reliable as fingerprints, but it is actually much more reliable due to it’s characteristics.

People are pointing out that there are some shortcomings associated with the scanners. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Privacy Information Center points out that privacy concerns might be raised, but it is hard to identify exactly how and what those concerns are at this time. A second shortfall to the system is that it can not totally replace the fingerprinting because only living people are able to get their irises mapped. Irises immediately break down after people die, leaving nothing to be mapped should the police try to identify a victim. Therefore, the newly implemented system must be used as a compliment to the current fingerprinting database system.

Some potential outcomes include many less errors in processing inmates at prisons and jails, better identification of people posing a safety threat due to an increasing database set, and much less time spent waiting for positive identifications of suspects. In addition, there would be less of a human element in making such conclusions.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124142566

Tags: Fingerprinting, Iris Scanning