Iris scanning system IDs you without your knowledge

Minority Report lovers, rejoice! Soon all of the technology that you swoon over and refer to incessantly will be a reality, at least according to this article in LiveScience referring to a more advanced kind of optical iris scanning. According to the article:

A public iris scanning device has been proposed in a patent from Samoff Labs in New Jersey. The device is able to scan the iris of the eye without the knowledge or consent of the person being scanned. The device uses multiple cameras, and then combines images to create a single scan.
Iris recognition is a biometric identification system that requires a high-resolution picture of the irides of the subject's eye. Pattern recognition software is then used to match that picture against future iris scans.

Of course, that's a big problem -- right now, just for privacy advocates, but eventually it will become obvious that maybe it's not such a good idea to be immediately recognized and have your every movement logged. Granted, there's a long way from filing a patent application to actually having a commercially available product that does what it's supposed to, but apparently a similar system has already been tested with a reasonable amount of success, and given the variety of lucrative uses and abuses that such a system will allow, there's no doubt that it will continue to be refined.

Tags: iris scanner, Minority Report, retail media