3-D Light System May Revolutionize Fingerprinting 71
coondoggie writes "The US Department of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate recently awarded almost $420,000 to a Kentucky company to further develop a contactless finger print/biometric system. The goal is a machine that can snap 10 fingerprints in high resolution in less than 10 seconds, without human intervention. This goal is beginning to look feasible. FlashScan3D is working with the University of Kentucky's Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments, and has developed a technique called 'structured light illumination' (WIPO patent description), where a pattern of dots or stripes is projected onto a curved or irregular surface."
Touchless fingerprinting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like RFID-loaded passports and cameras at sports arenas, this technology only seems useful at violating our privacy remotely.
We are talking about Chinese Democracy a few stories below. What scares me more than Chinese Democracy (and Axl's hairplugs) is American Fascism.
3D Light! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
Think border control and the DHS's "tourists are terrorists" programs (not the official name, of course).
I hear they have these things called scanners now. (Score:4, Insightful)
Step 1: Place fingers on scanner
Step 2: Tell scanner to scan fingers
Step 3: ????
Step 4: Police State!
Re:Great! (Score:3, Insightful)
We may be turning the West into a collection of police states, but at least they'll be time-efficient police states.
On the other hand, fingerprint analysis [wikipedia.org] will probably remain a slow, laborious and error-prone process.
Re:10 fingerprints in 10 seconds (Score:3, Insightful)
And if they had 80 of these devices, that's only 1 continuous year. If they had ~80k they could do the entire population in a single 8 hour day. Never underestimate the ability of the government to waste money invading our privacy.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
It takes about two seconds per finger. So, assuming they want all ten fingers it takes 20 seconds per-person. Add the time to explain how it all works let's say it takes a minute per-person. Lets say that 857,191 [flychicago.com] international travelers come through a busy airport in a given month. Since it's December that's an average of 27,651.32 per-day which is 460.85 man-hours, just for finger-printing.
Do the same calculation for the year (11,486,547/60=191442.45). Then multiply that by the cost of each employee (wages, payroll taxes, benefits, worker's comp, insurance (for stuff other than worker's benefits), etc), it's a HUGE amount of money just for finger printing every year at one busy airport (granted it is the busiest airport, but I doubt it's the busiest in terms of international travelers). If a $100,000 computer system can automate that it's a bargain (pays for itself in less than a month, not counting running costs, which can't be much).