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Iris Scanning For New Jersey Grade School
coolphysco1010 writes "When a parent arrives to pick up their child at one of three grade schools in the Freehold Borough School District, they'll need to look into a camera that will take a digital image of their iris. That photo will establish positive identification to gain entrance into the school..The Teacher-Parent Authorization Security System (T-PASS), a software application developed by Eyemetric Identity Systems, was installed on the front office computers at each of the three schools."
Not only that, but the technology is costing over $120 000 per school. So the government (National Institute of Justice) is using that money on iris scanning instead of the passing that sort of money on to the school boards for little things like the children's textbooks, teacher training, and computer access.
Seems that, to think of the children's present, we forgot to think of the children's future.
Amazingly enough I worked on a beta for this project. The iris scanner is a simple tool. The fact is IRIS images are practically impossible to fake. The images are stored in some kind of lossless image format which makes it easily stored into any backend database. You could run the whole thing with a Windows frontend. (VB or VC are the only ones supported in the camera API as far as I know) This project has great potential and I think this will be adopted in more schools throughout the state. Its no more expensive or difficult to administer than any other biometric. I think this is a great step towards safer schools and the practical applications of biometrics.
I guess this will make children attending the school totally safe - especially the ones standing around THE BUS STOP! From reading the article, it seems this system is only for parents who come into the school in the middle of the day. And looking at the school district website I find so many classes at the schools that it would be impractical to have every parent picking up a kid at the end of the day to park and go inside to get their children even if they only have 15 children per classroom. I have never heard of, and searching could not find, any cases where somebody walked into a school pretending to be a parent in order to kidnap a child. Putting all of this together, it is apparent that the "security" system is primarily in place to control the parents and to restrict them from participating in the education of their children. Want to make the school safe from outsiders coming in? The schools where I live have a very low tech way of doing things - once school starts all outside doors are locked except the door to the school office. If you need or want to come to school you just come through the office, where you will be challenged if the office staff does not know you.
From the first applicable google hit for "statistics child abductions"
Out-of-the-home abductions occur 45-65 times annually.
So, assuming this program is completely successful, and every child abduction in New Jersey occurs in that one school every year. You've saved just over one child.
Heck, for 120 grand you could probably just buy off all the sex offenders and save them all.
You don't need to cut off someones head to fool them. A good digital camera and printer will do the trick:
Security Magazine Article: 04/10/2004
"Many secure facilities employ iris scanners, which analyze the features that exist in the colored tissue surrounding the pupil including rings, furrows and freckles. To help prevent "fake eyes" from being used, these systems shine a light into the user's eye to monitor pupil dilation. However, they have been routinely defeated in the laboratory by several astute experimenters. To accomplish this, a high-quality digital image of an authorized person first was obtained by the experimenter, then enlarged to show the eye detail and subsequently printed out on high-quality photographic paper. Then, a small hole was cut in the photograph where the pupil was printed to expose the pupil in the experimenter's own eye. The experimenter would then place the photo up against his eye so that his pupil could be seen behind the hole. This very basic and inexpensive technique was effective in routinely fooling the iris scan readers of several manufacturers."
Rod Taylor