San Francisco Chronicle

Biometrics a hot topic at Comdex 

Benny Evangelista/Chronicle Staff Writer 

November 14, 2001 Las Vegas -- During his keynote speech at Comdex yesterday, EDS Chairman Dick Brown proudly showed off the company's airport security kiosk that employs state-of- the-art hand and face identification technology. 
Brown's message struck a chord with Comdex attendees, most of whom had to fly to Las Vegas for the convention with the images of the Sept. 11 attacks still fresh in their minds. 

"This is really the future of airport security," said Brown, who heads one of the world's largest technology services companies. "Now you can be sure the people on the plane on either side of you are who they say they are." That need to feel more secure made biometrics -- the use of technology for identification purposes -- a hot topic on the floor of this year's Comdex. There were about two dozen exhibitors pitching retina and fingerprint scanners, among other technologies, as the answer to the nation's urgent quest for safety. 

But even the strongest proponents of biometric technology warned that no one owns the magic bullet that by itself provides instant, surefire protection against terrorism. 

"After the events of Sept. 11, everyone's looking for the magic solution and it doesn't exist," said Grant Evans, executive vice president with Identix Inc., a Los Gatos firm that makes fingerprint identification devices. "There's no one product that will win this war. This is an infrastructure solution that will just show up as part of everyday life." 

There are already instances where biometrics are appearing at airports. Visionics Corp., one of the main proponents of computer technology that identifies people by unique measurements of their face, said this week that it landed contracts to install its program at two major U.S. airports. Visionics, of Jersey City, N.J., declined to identify those airports, citing security reasons. Oakland International Airport last month said it will install a facial biometric system made by Imagis Technologies of Vancouver, British Columbia. Visionics' technology will be used to scan the faces of all people entering the metal detectors and alert law enforcement officers to people who are identified as possible security threats, said company spokeswoman Frances Zelazny. She demonstrated the system by randomly scanning the faces of Comdex attendees passing the Visionics booth and using software that can search a database of photos as fast as 60 million images per minute. 

Civil liberties groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have criticized such biometric surveillance systems, saying tests show they produce too many false readings that could unfairly sweep innocent people into the dragnet. But Zelazny said facial biometrics is only one tool that can help law enforcement "do their jobs." 

"It's our duty and our responsibility to use whatever tools we have before us to stop terrorism," Zelazny said. 

The EDS "Express Entry" kiosk is already in use in Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. That airport, which has decades of experience with heightened security measures, uses seven kiosks to process frequent fliers entering and leaving the country. EDS is scheduled to say this week that it has picked Identix as its preferred provider of fingerprint technology. The kiosk uses Visionics technology to scan faces and measures the individual geometry of a person's hand. The kiosk then matches that information against data stored on a smart card and prints out a receipt needed to board a plane. The device, however, only identifies users who have preregistered with the system. But, instead of waiting in a customs line for two hours, the system can identify registered frequent fliers within 30 seconds. 
Identifying known customers allows airports to "focus their resources on the people we don't know," said James Dullem, president of EDS's global transportation industry group. 

LG Electronics Inc. of South Korea introduced the latest version of its eye- scanning product, the Iris Access 3000. The device uses infrared light to read the unique patterns in the iris of an eye. Like the EDS device, LG Electronics's iris scanner only identifies preregistered people. The system is also being tested to process frequent fliers through airports in Charleston, S.C., and the Netherlands. 

SecuGen Corp. of Milpitas sponsored a small pavilion showing various ways biometrics can secure doorways and computer networks. SecuGen designed a fingerprint detection system used to lock doorways to sensitive areas at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, but the technology is also part of a $600 door lock designed for home use, said Isauro Militante Jr. 

Even though interest in biometric security is higher, the poor economy has actually reduced the biometric industry's presence at Comdex. This year, there are about 25 vendors, compared with about 40 last year, said Jake Hong of the International Biometric Group, an independent biometric consulting company in New York. Still, interest in biometric security has accelerated dramatically since Sept. 11. Hong sounded a cautionary note that the public has to be realistic about biometrics. "If the intention is to identify every terrorist going to the airport, that's impossible," Hong said. "That's an expectation that technology just will not be able to fill."