Slashdot Mirror
Minority Report Style Iris Scanners In Mexico
TheRealPacmanJones writes "Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls 'the most secure city in the world.' In a partnership with Leon, one of the largest cities in Mexico with a population of more than a million, GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. The scanners will help revolutionize law enforcement not to mention marketing."
I hate it when filmmakers are just a little too prophetic.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Next time I post from an Internet Cafe in Leon, someone will know who I really am.
-A. Coward
So now it will be illegal to wear sunglasses in Mexico?
Emotions! In your brain!
'the most secure city in the world.'
Not if you live, work or visit there. They need basic protections from drug gangs and their corrupt government, military and police. They don't need these scanners, they need millions of bullet proof vests.
So what about when people get cataracts, wear sun glasses or opaque contact lenses?
It seems pretty useless honestly.
Time to buy stock in sunglass and colored contact manufacturers.
Mexico is a failed state well on its way to anarchy. This is a country that can't even keep its police chiefs from getting assassinated by drug cartel thugs, and they think iris scanners are going to make a damned bit of difference? Give me a break.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I'm sure that "Global Rainmakers Inc."(Seriously, could you have come up with something creepier?) have a foolproof plan for making sure that half the people involved aren't on one or more cartel payrolls, using the systems for tracking and assassinations, before the hardware is even in the field...
The movie I think of when I hear about retina scanners is Demolition Man.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Perhaps the scanners will have a bribe slot for currency?
Hello Mr. Rodriguez and welcome back to the GAP!
BURN IN HELL, MOTHERFUCKER!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I would have gone with a Barb Wire reference. Gun's version of Word Up playing in my head...
*PING* Weelcome to our store, Miister Anderson
*PING* Weelcome to our store, Agent Smith
*PING* Weelcome to our store, Agent Smith
*PING* Weelcome to our store, Agent Smith
*PING* Weelcome to our store, Agent Smith
*PING* Weelcome to our store, Agent Smith
---DELAMENESSIFICATION-COMMENCE-DELAMENESS-CIRCUMVENTION-DEVICE-ACTIVATED-BEEP-
-BZUKHSDFKLJKWERNICWRYCEWC&EYWCEBWHUIEXNWE-BEEP-DELAMENESSIFICATION-COMPLETE---
when do the patents on IRIS recognition run out ?
I think its soon...
or now...
regards
John Jones
Designer contact lenses will be able EASILY defeat this system should it go into effect. You can already buy custom color contacts. If this junk becomes implemented it will be easier than ever to pretend being someone else just by wearing a copy of their eyes. Easy identity theft much?
I actually live in León, and I haven't heard anything about this (not ads, not rumours, nothing). So yeah, I kind of find the note somewhat not-believable. And for the guy that said that México is in its way to anarchy, lol @ you.
One film that showed how to circumvent this was "Demolition Man", where the character played by Wesley Snipes uses an eyeball torn off a doctor to open a door.
Are there any other films using the same idea? It seems pretty obvious to me.
From TFA: "And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: "When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in.""
The reality of implementing systems like this will probably be more along the lines of Ghost in the Shell than Minority Report. People are corrupt (this is Mexico we're talking about, I assume you *have* to be corrupt and use "unofficial channels" to get anything useful done there.) And systems get hacked, of course, but fixed hardware systems like this can be locked down pretty tight. Not only that, but the system looks small enough to be put inside a hand-held unit; if this technology becomes as cheap and efficient as this article promises, you won't need to tap the scanners themselves - just put up your own hidden ones over a large area, and have them transmit wirelessly. Just like skimming.
Emotions! In your brain!
akooracy, that ju wan to sleep weeth my seester.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
if a Mexican guy walks past one and it says something like "Good afternoon, Mr. Yakamoto," you'll know to stay the hell away from him.
Now I have to fork over my eyes too. Have they even thought about how hard it is to identify the dude in a lineup after that?
If you're a law-abiding citizen, you have nothing to hide, and thus couldn't possibly object.
what the FUCK
No sense of humor? Tsk, tsk.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Your life is then over, as you cant even get a sandwich from the local burger doodle when doors no longer open for you. Or worse, it calls the police automatically for you as it traps you in the double door 'protection system'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I mean, shit happens, right? And even blind people.. if you don't know where to look to have them scanned, how's that supposed to work?
Also, are these scanners just falling from the sky? Somebody's got to pay for them, and you know they aren't going to be cheap...
I hate it when filmmakers are just a little too prophetic.
Or maybe writers like Philip K Dick?
Everyone there wears sunglasses.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I don't really like iris scanners, as they give criminals who need my identity a reason to remove my eyes. I like my eyes where they are thanks.
But the first thing I do when I get up out of bed, is hit that streets a-runnin' and try to beat the masses...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It should be pretty easy to create contact lenses (even non-rx) to thwart this? Maybe even when you register wear the lenses to have false data on their systems
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
Quato will halt the excavation and weapons test of the BFG before Sarge can steal it!
They need to integrate this Iris scanner with the person's location history, recent contacts and online activity and come up with a TerrorScore(tm). If it goes above a certain threshold that a Bayesian algorithm has determined will make them likely to commit criminal acts, the drones can be automatically dispatched to the location of the subject with a hellfire missile to dispose of the threat. It's like spam filtering, but for people! ;)
If you think about it, we actually need Software Patents and Pantent-laws, so that we we can invent all these New World Odor schemes by suing them for violating our patends disclosed in simulations presented in movie theatres.
And there you have it. Thanks Orson for the movie, now who'se going to buy that evidence inherint in the disclosure of that movie? Klingon is a language too, and the Klingons don't attack Planet Earth because they
know the RIAA and MPAA will sue them using Patent-law. It's like this with COPS, they are only arresting un-licensed drug dealers because they hold the Patents on drug-dealing: government hates competition.
without prejudice
Exactly. Dick is the prophet here, not a crappy movie
Phillip K. Dick should be required reading for all kids. That way when they grow up and begin making decision that effect others, they just might(maybe) say, "Wow, I read something like this when I was a kid, it didn't turn out so well if I remember correctly." The reason so many Science Fiction writers can often be prophetic is that they look at a technology or an idea, and ask "I wonder what could go wrong with this?", "What will this idea mutate into in 100 years?" They think about the horrible, painful, or just bizarre turns technology and ideas can take. It is usually intended as social commentary, but is most often ignored...
Maybe they are just more in-tuned with the spirit of Murphy's Law than most....
I guess these business guys just don't grok that in Mexico, people who don't want their irises scanned or to be tracked, stuff like that, are known to cut off the heads of people who are trying to dick with them. And that's *after* they have some "sport" with them.
They might as well issue these iris scanner techs *red shirts*.
This Carter guy and Eric Schmidt should just hook-up and spend their remaining days performing colonoscopys and sodomy on each other.
Exactly. Dick is the prophet here, not a crappy movie
{sigh} you're nitpickers, both of you.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"Fraud, which is a $50 billion problem, will be completely eradicated"
How soon after this will everyone be required to be chipped in the hand in order buy, sell or work? Mark of the beast is coming and sheeple on the internets will welcome it with open arms because they will think that it is "cool" and subversive against the faith of their forefathers. Do you really want to become a drone?
Wake up before it's too late.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I'd advise taking as much Acid as you can all the time - ok you may have issues adjusting to this new reality but there is a small chance if you do enough you'll irreversibly change the shape of your pupils... If not at least you won't get bored trying.
How anyone, except those that will profit from this, can think this a good idea is beyond me. Should enough politicians be bought, and sheeple swayed that this makes it into Canada and the US, I'm going to have to move into the mountains, or under a bridge. I've got a sneaking suspicion that this one of the 'boiling frog' ideas where the original is so outlandish that a watered down version would be accepted. This is just a bad idea on so many levels. I will refuse to participate.
Since the information would be kept in a private companys' database, I can't help but think of the movie Robocop, where all of society is run by a single corporation. I genuinely hope that I, or my family don't live to see such a society.
Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity!
Los Narcos will simply put a bullet (or 50) into whatever scanner they see. Or do the same to the scanner installers. GFL, Ciudad Leon!
Well normally i object to vandalism but if these arrive in the US I'm putting on dark sunglasses and going on a break the sensor spree.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
I'm pretty sure I know the US company who prototyped this for them. Apparently the prototype can iris scan someone correctly at a relative speed of 60 MPH (e.g. scan someone inside a car driving by from a fix point on the side of the road). Don't know if this production model can do the same. I've already have designed a counter-measure for this, however, if it ever becomes common.
I don't see that many problems concerning privacy. So this system will remember when and where we went. So? It is not to be placed in our homes.
I really do not think those missing links in Mexico even know what a computer is aside from something to steal and try to sell. The entire pathetic excuse of a 3rd world country known as Mexico is the poster child of a long failed and out of control nation. Nearly every single one of them is corrupt in some way, shape, form or manner. Usually, on the payroll for one drug cartel or another. All the savages down there know is murder, rape, theft, filth and decay. I honestly doubt that any "prophetic" development of technology from a mediocre Cultist Cruise film would be tested in the sewer of the Earth.
The only thing even developed in the sewage called Mexico is: how to illegally enter another country, how to kidnap and extort people in another country, ways to show off unchecked mass murders, what to steal and methods of stealing it, how to exploit the good natured laws of another country to drain them for everything they got, exceptionally poor craftsmanship and poor work ethics, methods to lower the age of sexual consent lower than the existing age of 12, how to play a race card, how to have the audacity to go to another country and tell them how to run their country while yours falls further into pure chaos and anarchy with everything failing, how to kill tourists, how to rob tourists, how to rape tourists, how to use stray animals for food to sell to tourists, how to beg, how to invade another country by refusing to assimilate, how to falsely claim how wonderful Mexico is while fleeing that dump and illegally being in another country, how to ignore the near endless number of problems in Mexico as it continues to completely collapse and be fully run by drug cartels, how to be even more stupid, how to claim being Spanish and insult true Spaniards, how to run such a massive failure of a country the savages go running like cockroaches when the light is turned on to other countries (usually illegally), how to spread poverty, how to spread destruction, how to ruin everything you come in contact with, how to drop anchor babies, how to use a sharpie instead of having eyebrows, how to spray paint illiterate scribblings on any surface, how to not value education and learning, how to use books as toilet paper instead of for reading, how to spin crime to look okay and demand a mass pardon for criminals, how to backstab and betray anybody and everybody...
The list just goes on and you damn sure will never find anything even slightly productive in it unless you include rolling burritos. Yet, it is expected for others to really think somebody would waste their time and effort in such a pathetic excuse for a 3rd world country as to test something that will just be stolen the very day after it hits the soil of that putrid sewer known as Mexico?
Bullshit. Typical though I suppose, lies are one of the many cancers exported by Mexico.
Buy shares of all major companies that make sunglasses!
Not that I agree with it. But far too many people (*cough* those who presumably represent us *cough*) don't think any further than the marketing blurb. So go ahead and see the suicide rates rise in a score years, or the exodus of people getting sick of living in a digital straitjacket. Maybe have some people accidentally lose an eye because of ill-conceived (or straight-out malicious) hijinx with the scanners. If that's what it takes to get the point across, then that's the price our representatives will have us pay. Though I'd really rather have such mishaps "happen" to DC dwellers.
Corollary: Any self-respecting security geek must go there and find as many ways to game the system as possible. Don't forget to show and tell.
"Sir ... he just ... disappeared!"
(Or even: "Señor .... ha .... disapericido!")
No sig today...
being blind will become a crime.
...for me to get those mirrored contacts I've thought about since college. Originally I just wanted to freak out my professors.
Mexico has free elections, working albeit inssuficient working services, public education continues everywhere, and in general people doing business legitimately in the most are unnafected by drug violence.
Although the police is clearly corrupt most of the officers are honest and not few die everyfay figthing thedistribution of the drug of choice of the USian middle class cosumer.
The army is less corrupt, it is no small mercy that the cases of drug related corrutpion are few on this force.
Does Mexico have a problem? Yes, no question, and it is massive.
Is Mexico a failed state? No, by no means, but we will continue to find trolls and racists that will labour this point ad nauseam.
I can't recall any iris scanner in the original story ...
http://staringatstrangers.typepad.com/staring_at_strangers/2010/08/will-el-hermano-mayor-de-leon-be-watching-you.html
First off I just want to thank Pacman Jones for taking the time to post this.
Second off, the they're going to make going out in public so annoying that we'll all choose to stay indoors, thus paving the way for the real plan, a Surrogates style future.