Wired News reports (unsurprisingly) that DHS expects international
travel to require fingerprints or iris scans in the near future.
If, like me, you're skeptical this will prevent terrorism, but
concerned about privacy, you should probably prefer iris scanning
to fingerprints. Iris scanning is a pure authentication technology
with no real forensic uses: if the feds have your iris code, all they can do is determine
whether a new scan matches the stored scan. By contrast, as everyone
who watches CSI knows, you leave your fingerprints everywhere
you go, so even if you're not scanned in real time, you're
leaking personal information everywhere you go.
I try not to think about what it's going to be like when the feds want to use DNA-based biometrics.
