Two interesting notes today...
- Kerry brought up the use of iris & fingerprint recognition in the final Presidential debate tonight for use in border control and criticized the President for lack of expediency in using such tools to protect the nation.
While it was a quick comment and everything in the debates is boiled down b/c of lack of time, there is work being done by INS and DHS to get to the point of using such systems on the borders regularly, but there's a spate of testing and standards evaluations that need to be finished beforehand. Not to mention, there's a need for policies to be put in place as to how to handle the data: where,how,&with what other info is biometric info to be stored; with whom & when can it be shared; how long will it be retained, etc. That said, my impression - as I noted earlier in this blog - is that progress in this area has been very slow in the past 3 years given the increased motivation to answer these questions that have existed since well before 9/11/01 -- even ignoring high error rates of most biometrics and the time needed to advance specific recognition algorithms. While testing & evaluation and efforts on standards may show that biometrics are a long time in coming and/or not helpful from the perspective of potential for terrorists to spoof their identities, there are other non-biometric solutions that could be implemented by now (ie since 9/11), if that was what the government wanted to do - especially an administration that finds no problems with the PATRIOT Act and Ashcroft's use of it.
- Big headline today -- the FDA has approved use of implanting RFIDs . Ik! No thanks, I'll pass. If I ever have a condition where it would be advantageous medically to carry some info about myself, I'll update the ole medical alert bracelet over the subcutaneous route.