Industry specialists say the machines would immediately flag a fabricated biometric that exactly matched the database template. And identification is foolproof. Identicator uses nine fingerprint measurements. PenOp, Inc. has more than 30 ways to authenticate signatures, including unforgeable characteristics like acceleration, deceleration, pen pressure, total elapsed time and pen angle. IriScan, the Marlton, N.J., firm that patented Bank United's iris technology, uses 266 different measurable characteristics of a person's iris, a membrane that has muscles with distinctive ridges, freckles and stretch marks that are formed in childhood and never change.
Color has nothing to do with it, and glasses and contact lenses present no obstacle.
Their irises are different, even though their DNA is the same. The IriScan technology was developed in the early 1980s and demonstrated for the first time in 1989. But not one that everybody could use. Profitability for IriScan, like many other biometrics companies, has depended on its ability to translate yesterday's technological exotica into an everyday tool. We have had a couple of generations of products that are showing a reasonable cost structure and convenience.