Miami Herald

The eyes have it: Iris scanners a hit

January 9, 2003
By Celeste Perri/Bloomberg News

Amsterdam, Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Alain Vogel can get through immigration procedures at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport in under a minute. All he has to do is make eyes at a machine.

Vogel has paid 99 euros ($102) to become a member of Schiphol Groep's Privium program for fast-track border passage. The image of his iris is scanned by a device made by Iridian Technologies Inc. and matched to the data on a smart card, allowing the turnstile to open and grant him passage.

"When the queues are outrageously long, this saves me a lot of time,'' said Vogel, 28, who flies about seven times a month to London and elsewhere in his capacity as a marketing director.

Because of heightened security procedures, a 45-minute flight from Amsterdam to London can mean waiting as much as twice that long in security and check-in lines. Schiphol is wagering that busy people and, in particular, business travelers are willing to pay to get through lines faster.

Schiphol's not stopping in the Netherlands. The airport, which also operates Terminal 4 at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, has introduced a trial iris-scan program to protect access to the tarmac. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will monitor the results of the program, which is the first of its kind.

Governments and companies are upgrading and introducing biometrics, or the use of physiological or behavioral characteristics to determine identity, to their security systems.

Companies such as Iridian, which holds the patent on iris- scan technology, Viisage Technology Inc. and Identix Inc. are set to benefit as total biometric sales are expected to surge to $4.04 billion by 2007 from $601 million last year, according to the International Biometric Group.

Bigger Companies

"As time goes by, huge amounts of money will be spent on both facial and fingerprint scanning,'' said Richard Perkins, a money manager at Perkins Capital Management Inc. in Minnesota, which invests $250 million and owns about 1.5 million Identix shares. He thinks growth in the industry will come from government spending.

Identix on Monday said it will provide Dutch financial- services company ING Groep NV with fingerprint scanners so the bank can perform background checks of prospective employees more quickly. Identix also sells equipment to the U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services.

"There's not a lot of doubt that the market for this technology is going to be huge,'' said Trevor Prout, a consultant at IBG, which provides biometric consulting to companies.

Bigger technology companies are also becoming active in biometrics. LG Electronics Inc., Siemens AG, Fujitsu Ltd. and STMicroelectronics NV are all active in biometrics, according to IBG. LG makes the terminals used in some iris-scanning devices while STMicro provides semiconductors to fingerprint-scanning technology.

Defining Traits

Biometrics are also being used in areas beyond borders. Employers are deploying biometrics such as fingerprint scanning on desktops to be certain that employees are who they say they are when accessing sensitive data.

Airports, casinos and police departments across the U.S. have begun to implement facial-scanning devices in public spaces and improve security. The technology can match certain characteristics, such as the distance between eyes and nose, on a face from a crowd to a database of suspected criminals.

"By introducing the accuracy of iris recognition to protect sensitive areas like the tarmac, stolen identification cards and compromised keypad access codes will no longer pose a significant threat,'' said Frank Fitzsimmons, chief operating officer of Iridian, in a statement.

At Schiphol, more than 4,000 people, as old as 74 and as young as 12, have paid for the right to zip through passport control and security to duty-free shopping in less than two minutes. Airport officials expect more than 40,000 people to enroll by 2005.

The Fast Lane

While the Schiphol program is different from other biometric uses because it is an optional service for frequent flyers, it will soon be extended to airport employees. Schiphol, which is 98 percent owned by the Dutch government and the city of Amsterdam, plans to require all employees with access to restricted areas, or about 30,000 people, to get their iris scanned and a smart card implanted on their security badge this year.

Each time Vogel or another member passes through the Privium gates, next to the general immigration lines that can snake back 30 meters (98 feet) at rush hour, the machine scans his iris, matching more than 200 separate points of data it reads on his eye to the card. Analysts say it's the safest biometric available for border passage, since no two irises are alike, are difficult to modify and are rarely damaged or injured.

The system is the envy of other travelers: "Look at check- in, there's always a long line,'' said Raphael Sharon, 27, who entered the Privium sales office on a recent Friday morning to get a brochure. "My grandparents are older and I have a baby. For them, I'm willing to pay for the convenience of parking nearby and quicker check-in.''

Branding

An iris scan will also produce results more quickly than a scan of a fingerprint: A check against 100,000 iris codes in a database takes two seconds. A finger-scan search will take 15 seconds to perform the same task.

Still, iris technology isn't foolproof. It won't work with sunglasses on, though clear glasses impose no hindrance. It can also have an incorrect read-out on people with extremely light or very dark eyes, said Conny Lanza, the Privium project manager. An actual iris not connected to the eye socket won't get a positive reading, she said.

Schiphol owns the application of the Privium package, which incorporates Iridian's iris-scan technology and software from CMG Plc. The airport is hoping to widen its use as a brand to other European airports. It's currently talking to Frankfurt's airport and London Heathrow about possible cooperation. Schiphol would not disclose financial negotiations or give details on how it plans to franchise the technology.

Drawbacks

There are some losers: people who hold non-European Union passports. Because of national jurisdictions, the Dutch government, which approved Privium last month after a year of pilot programs, limited the program to EU citizens. Another drawback: people in wheelchairs can't use the system because the eye-scanning point is too high.

Privium is only the beginning of biometrics in the Netherlands. The Ministry of Interior Affairs plans to introduce a nationwide identification card using some sort of biometric in 2004. The technology will then be added to all passports, said Frank van Beers, a ministry spokesman.

When the Dutch do integrate biometrics onto passports, it's likely to make at least one person happy: Vogel's wife, Rachella. She doesn't have a Privium card. "Every time we travel,'' she said. "He's already through Privium and done with his duty-free shopping by the time I'm clear. I have to wait in line forever.'