Slashdot Mirror
Police To Begin iPhone Iris Scans
cultiv8 writes "Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company's already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track criminal suspects. The smartphone-based scanner, named Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, is made by BI2 Technologies in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and can be deployed by officers out on the beat or back at the station. An iris scan, which detects unique patterns in a person's eyes, can reduce to seconds the time it takes to identify a suspect in custody. This technique also is significantly more accurate than results from other fingerprinting technology long in use by police, BI2 says. When attached to an iPhone, MORIS can photograph a person's face and run the image through software that hunts for a match in a BI2-managed database of U.S. criminal records. Each unit costs about $3,000."
Because it seems like the equivalent of being booked, fingerprinted, and mugshot every time you get pulled over for a traffic violation. If you don't like the picture and the information on my ID, then go fuck yourself.
A ban against this absolutely SHOULD NOT be in the constitution. It would be ridiculous to try and imagine every single thing that could possibly be invented in the future to infringe on our rights. The constitution lays down rights such as "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". ANYTHING that violates these rights is unconstitutional. I think the 4th amendment does a fine job here.
Now, anything in "plain view" is obviously not protected by the 4th amendment. Seems to me that although your iris is in "plain view", specific details about it are not. Anything that requires a $3000 lens assembly attached to a sophisticated piece of electronic equipment cannot possibly be regarded as "in plain view" by any reasonable person. The problem is that lawyers and police officers are usually far from reasonable and generally have little, if any, common sense.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
You pre-suppose that I did anything.
If I am randomly stopped by a police officer who wishes to take an iris scan, this isn't about me being innocent and 'working with the police to prove my innocence' ... This completely violates the assumption that I am innocent in the first place. On what basis have you established that I might not be innocent? Because you don't like my hat?
I seriously don't get people who think it is natural that I should subject myself to being arbitrarily catalogued and identified on the whim of some cop with a shiny gadget.
There used to be a presumption that I was free to go about my business, until a police officer had probable cause. In your version of things, random stops and 'papers please' becomes the norm ... This is not what a free society does.
What you are effectively saying is "think of the children" ... The mistaken belief that we should allwaive our rights so that the nebulous concept of "the greater good" can be served.
Fuck that.
Police don't get to walk up to me on the street and 'suggest' that I allow myself to be fingerprinted ... WTF is different about this just because it s fast and automated?
If you don't get this, you are part of the problem.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.