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Dept. of Homeland Security To Test Iris Scanners

Posted by Soulskill on from the eye-for-an-eye dept.

SonicSpike writes "The Homeland Security Department plans to test futuristic iris scan technology that stores digital images of people's eyes in a database and is considered a quicker alternative to fingerprints. The department will run a two-week test in October of commercially sold iris scanners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, where they will be used on illegal immigrants, said Arun Vemury, program manager at the department's Science and Technology branch. 'The test will help us determine how viable this is for potential (department) use in the future,' Vemury said."

1 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Already Used In The UK... by pandrijeczko · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...when the damn things are working, anyway!

    A few of our airports have them for inbound passengers, Gatwick in London being one of them.

    I found them quite useful to avoid the customs queues when I flew back into the UK but a lot of that is because so few other people registered to use them. It also took me three or four uses before I'd worked out the optimal positions to look into the mirrors, I would imagine that if a lot of people signed up to use them, it would be slower than going via a human customs officer.

    Plus, as I implied earlier, about 50% of the time they were Out Of Order anyway, so the benefits seem quite negligible.

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.