The Dawning of the Biometric Age - BusinessWeek
Editor's Note: The Dawning? It just dawned on me that maybe we were a little early with Pay By Touch when we came out with it in 2002.
The Dawning of the Biometric Age
Say goodbye to PINs and photo IDs. Say hello to digital fingerprints (actually they are finger scans, not prints) and iris scans (see)...and to new opportunities for security businesses
By Ellen Gibson
In baby steps and giant leaps, the world is moving further into digital identification and biometrics. The new technology raises concerns about privacy, of course, as well as opportunities for security companies.
The latest to join the migration: Switzerland. On May 17, Swiss voters narrowly approved a government plan to switch over to electronic passports, tied to a national fingerprint registry. The new passport will contain a microchip that stores personal data, a digital photo, and two fingerprints. At border crossings or airport checkpoints, travelers would have their fingerprints scanned and digital photos taken to make sure they match info in their e-passports.
Switzerland is actually behind much of Europe. Every nation in the European Union must institute fingerprint-enabled e-passports by next summer. Germany, France, and the Netherlands have already started issuing them.
Unhindered Trip
Some locales are testing more advanced systems. For instance, at Manchester Airport in Britain, where facial-recognition devices have been installed in security gates, passengers with optional e-passports can bypass long lines and stroll right through. While travelers enjoy the unhindered trip through the airport, boosters say e-passports enable the government easily and swiftly to check anyone entering the country against international watchlists.
The digitization of personal information is a boon to companies in biometrics, or technology that can identify people based on unique physiological traits, such as fingerprints, (the media will never learn...once again, it always was, and always will be finger scans!) DNA or even a person's gait or blood-vessel patterns. There are countless applications for biometrics—in border control, medical records, computing, and commercial transactions—and many experts predict it won't be long before such scans are part of everyday lives.
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