Biometric Technology Creeping Into Everyday Life
Biometric technology has made its way to the Statue of Liberty. People who intend to use public lockers at the Statue of Liberty are now required to touch an electronic reader that scans fingerprints when renting, opening, and closing lockers.
In addition to the Statue of Liberty, the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, Chicago’s Union Station, and Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure theme parks in Florida use the fingerprint locker technology.
Meanwhile, the Nine Zero hotel in Boston uses a camera that analyzes the iris patterns of guests, the Piggly Wiggly grocery store chain has installed a touch fingerprint scanner at four stores in South Carolina, and McDonalds has tested a pay-by-fingerprint system.
While the technology has been used in the military and corporate world to restrict access, the biggest deployment of biometrics will be US-VISIT, a system for tracking travelers that requires visitors to put their visas and passports, which will have facial-recognition data, through biometric scans.
Biometrics is being increasingly used to control access to computers. “Within the next five to 10 years, we’re going to see biometrics play an increasingly large part of consumer transactions,” predicts Dean Douglas, a services vice president at IBM.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Associated Press (08/12/04); Bergstein, Brian.