http://www.physorg.com/news6134.html

now you know why those who wish to protect privacy are against biometric id"s.
what tests will be run on you each time that you use a credit card? will that information be available to an insurance company that will suddenly raise rates because of something newly detected because of a new addition to the scanners code?

imagine a woman going to the store, and buing some clinique... as she pays for the purchase, the clerk says "oh my, you better get to a doctor, our system says your near to having a miscarraige. oh and have a nice day, and come again!"

note that this tecnology is limited right now to short distances... but there is nothing stoping targeted systems from reading the same info from more than 30 feet away!!!! just put the camera in the main board of a look up table at the bus station. you look to read, it analyses you...

i hope all this counts as prior work, and i hold the patents (anyone want to help me hold them up before the 1 year deadline?)

perhaps your bank might not loan you money or work with you because of the information that they gathered from you accessing your ATM

if you uses eye scans as biometric keys, you also give people control over your life! (some companies will not hire smokers, etc)

well.. we thought it was ok for companies to monitor our personal lives to detect if drugs are taken (despite the large postal study that refuted ALL the points for doing so), why are we now supprised that we will find it hard to be able to do anything to stop such control given we allowed such precident.

American people are very stupid in considering what comes next. Too often they will trade some crucial point on something that compromises their integrity and feel that it doesnt. meanwhile it does, and once allowed to live it will grow. biometrics and distance analysis for "safety" will lead to a world of public analysis of private lives and the sale of such data to corporate interestes and concerns without regard to the person that that data was collected from. we went from humans to cattle (note that rfids being put in humans were first installed to track cattle, sheep, and dogs - man as animal to the government).

tunable lasers will allow for skin analysis... it will flash so fast you dont know your being targeted.

terahertz waves will allow your boss to pull the equivalent of a full body xray each time you walk into work. or walk down a street...

dont be surprised in 10 years when walk down a street and you suddenly cant go someplace because of some sensors correct sense, but erroneous conclusion of what that data can mean (meaning that the ancillaries that cause a false positive in interpretation are always ignored!!!)

this all sucks.. welcome to the new America in 25 years... A Socialist Tecno-Fascist "Free" Corporate Police state...

hello, Artful -

I regretfully have to agree w/ you. Privacy in the US disappeared a long time ago. For a half-dollar, I can get every place you lived, your SS#, your credit score; all accidents you've been in; every job you've had since age 16. It's disgusting but true. Now you have supreme court candidates like John Roberts who actually have formed legal arguments that the Constitution provides no basis for privacy. How ironic is it that your information is much more robustly protected by countries in Europe than here? (It's a federal crime to release ANY information on a EU citizen, except directly by law enforcement and they need a magistrate to issue it).

Somebody needs to create a worm that can erase all of one's privacy information out there in cyberspace. I know very little about programming, so I'm out...

- trepidaciously spinning solids

such a worm is not possible...

we have forgotten that we are driving, and we are asleep at the wheel...

This crap is ridiculous...
So your employer decides to get one to "login to the computer" and uses the excuse that "its safer, no one else can 'steal' your password."

Then what?

Your employer knows far more information about you and your private life than he should. He may know more about your health and condition than you do.

Get pregnant? Maybe boss doesn't want pregnant workers. Hes got a good while to watch you for a mess up and fire you before you get into later stages of pregnancy...

The availability of this to anyone is not far from being an invasion of privacy.

Might as well make the best of it. Somebody want to get on the hack to tell if that hot brunette at the bar is horny or what


By the way, stop worrying about password security... I watched a guy hack into a Sysco switch in less than five minutes; including the time it took to locate and download the script. Your Password is only safe from honest people.

BTW...the guy was just pissed at corporate for changing all his switch passwords without consulting him first. So he changed them all back. It was cool and scary at the same time.

I am part of a team developing a personal security retinal scanner, thought I'd throw in a few points.

Retinal scan is probably the best form of biometric system for multiple reasons:

1. Privacy invasion: *Retinal scan WILL NOT work from a distance.* It would require an immense amount of luck to acheive the correct alignment. Iris scan, facial recog, voice, gait, 3d facial, body shape, odor, are all acheivable from a range of distances.

2. No useful data is stored. In other words, unlike fingerprints that can be lifted to hack a fingerprint scanner or voice recordings that can be stolen ("Hi, my name is Wener Brandis..") it is not possible to create an artificial human eye that will work with our retinal scanner, due to specific refractive properties of the eye fluids/lenses, etc. Also, our model (and any model that should be adopted) would store biometric data as an abstracted, encrypted non human readable data string. Even with total public access to enrolled database, we guarantee 0% possiblity of spoofing.

3. No physical contact is nessesary. As compared to fingerprint, handprint, dna, etc.

The arguments should not be against the technology, but rather against the government or policing bodies that may practice unfair actions against the populace.

I am open to questions and comments.

It was revealed last week that a fifth of the world's CCTV cameras are in Britain, specifically England. There are also plans to add speakers to them so they can tell people what not to do and microphones have been asked for. Big Brother anyone?

Problem is, that the technology enables the devious practices of humans in power. Since when are bodies of power not tempted to increase and protect that power? And that power is in a continual state of political and social indoctrination that always has precedence, and never loses it's usurping qualityover us and our rights and privileges, but in this case almost always to freedom's demise. It's a simple equation: the more power we have over ourselves, the less power government has over us. This is not an acceptable scenario for a strengthening power-hungry government. Technology affords it the means to correct this.

There is nothing so powerful as solidarity, whether peaceful as in Ghandi's India or violent as in Walesa's Czecheckoslovakia. But solidarity, like gravity, is a weak force when few are involved. And solidarity requires fortitude gumption and unwavering dedication and unity. All traits that Americans have grown too soft and apathetic to rouse. No, it will take a major event to change the course we're on. Not a 9/11 or a useless war. A major event, and probably a furtive one that quietly catches most by surprise, and that seriously changes the soft comfortable disposable lifestyle America is addicted to. What can/will that be? Guesses anyone?

I would put it in a more positive way:
as soon as a technical possibility exists, governmental agencies do use it against citizens.
Having worked in weapon industries, having filed several patents, I could see it.
Filtering phone calls by caller # is possible? They do it. Intervening in phone calls? They do it.

So it is the engineer's responsibility not to develop intrusive technology.

And I'm not convinced by any argument telling something is impossible. As semiconductors had 2µm features, people saw fundamental physical limitations making sizes under 1µm impossible...

"Non human readable" is the worst possibility, where only the Governments have access to the data.

And don't believe serving your Government helps your country. What your country is capable of, any one does it six months later. Citizens are the only losers of this silly game.

I agree with the spirit of your post, but there are always engineers and scientists that will fail your expectations. At least there are presently; I'll try not to fatalize the future. Actually I think that technology will be the key to increasingly more prosperous times to come. We're dealing with the social birth pangs of an explosion in scientific discovery and the technology it is creating, at amazing speed. It's moving so fast and it is so attractive to power mongers. To that effect do we have to bear the brunt of it, but I do believe we'll continue to get thru it and at some time down the line technology, which has routinely helped to ease and heal, will be greatly mitigating the scarcities that create conflict. But for now, things are very silly in much of the politics of the world and there is precious little that could end it soon.