Eye scans: A high tech hall pass?

Eye scans: A high tech hall pass?: "

"The brushed aluminum box on the brick wall glows purple, a rim of light around an unblinking HAL-like eye. You peek in and stare for a second, and the steel doors click open. A soothing female voice says: "Identification is completed."
Welcome to Park Avenue Elementary School.Freehold Borough School District installed the iris-scanning devices in its three schools last month. It and a district down the road in New Egypt are the first U.S. school systems to study what happens when adults are asked to eye-scan to get in the door each day. .... Parents began signing up last fall, submitting to scans of both eyes and driver's licenses. At last count, 300 of a possible 1,500 had enrolled, with many citing privacy concerns. It's optional, and Meara doesn't plan to change that. Privacy advocates such as Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., say people's concerns are justified — both government agencies and computer hackers could someday access the data. "Eventually it's going to be used in ways that have nothing to do with getting into those three schools," she says." (02/23/06)

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