Looks like no one will get away with anything anymore, because scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have developed iris scanner software that can work and identify people and perps from as far as 40 feet away.
If you were planning on a life of crime, forget it.
Developed by biometrics specialist Marios Savvides, director of CMU's CyLab Biometrics Center, the iris scanner uses a run-of-the-mill Pan Tilt Zoom camera (PTZ) in conjunction with cutting-edge, comprehensive Advance Shape Model software (ASM) to suss out key features and identify the iris, then adds it to a database and cross-references it with data (and possible matches) already in the system.
According to an instructional YouTube video about the software featuring Savvides, the long-range iris scanner would be used for the purposes of law enforcement: "There's a lot of potential applications [for it] ... saving lives, as you can identify a possible criminal, wanted for murder or other crimes," he said.
Another possibility for this software? That it will render fingerprinting technology useless. Remember the good ol' days, when you could just burn your fingerprints off to become untraceable? Now, you'll just have to transplant yourself some new eyeballs à la Minority Report.
Paranoid about someone using the iris scanner to track your every move? Don't worry, Savvides has some words of comfort on the matter: "People are being tracked, their every move, their purchasing, their habits, where they are every day, through credit card transactions, through advantage cards — if someone really wanted to know what you were doing every moment of the day, they don't need facial recognition or iris recognition to do that."
He does have a point.
Photo: Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod | U.S. Army
