Long arm of the law gets eye-scan technology
Even if you have your father’s or mother’s eyes, your own peepers are still distinctly yoursas distinct as your fingerprints or dental records. The New York Police Department is now taking advantage of that individuality with their new eye-scan technology, implemented on November 15, 2010. The technology takes high-resolution pictures of the irises, and is an addition, not a substitution, for the already implemented fingerprint and photograph identification.The scanning takes place twice: first during booking, and then before the arraignment. This is to prevent inmates from assuming false identities at their arraignments. In the past, prisoners have used this practice to make judges think they’re being held for lesser charges. In March, a prisoner on Staten Island arrested for five armed robberies was released after pleading guilty to a marijuana charge, but was recaptured after 56 hours.The technology was first implemented in the Central Booking division of Manhattan Criminal Court. On November 19, Brooklyn will embrace the program, followed by the Bronx on November 26, Queens on December 3, and Staten Island on or before December 9. The project costs 500,000 and will be paid for by the Department of Homeland Security. Will it prove successful enough to expand across the country into other major cities, though? There are arguments both for and against.Marc Rotenberg, who works for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says that this technology is less invasive privacy-wise than DNA profiling, and the NYPD themselves are optimistic that the eye-scanners will help to avoid problems they’ve encountered in the past. There are several benefits that make the iris an effective method for identification:
- It is protected against damage by the cornea, as opposed to fingerprints
- Its shape is more predictable than fingerprints
- Genetically identically twins have independent iris textures
- The texture remains stable over 30 or more years
- The scan can be done from a few meters away
However, Donna Lieberman the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union is hesitant about the adoption, saying that the public needs to be more informed about the effectiveness and cost of the project.