Although costs have dropped dramatically in recent years, setting up scanning equipment at every point of purchase still daunts the financial and retail industries. If it costs more than the fraud, then we might as well use what we have. Even though banks suffer huge losses from identity theft fraud every year, we are not there yet when it comes to cost effectiveness. Money isn't the only hangup. For many, the science of biometrics summons an Orwellian fear that Big Brother will take the data from all those digital body parts and create the mother of all databases, capable of tracking every move from cradle to grave.
Civil libertarians bemoan the threats to privacy presented by biometrics.
They create creepy scenarios in which hidden cameras identify check-bouncers as they walk into a mall. They envision police using fingerprints stored by your bank to match at crime scenes. The technology is moving at the speed of light and the law is moving at the speed of a tortoise. The real threat is the marriage of all these different powerful databases and technologies in the absence of any laws. One of those laws would have to be a prohibition on the sale of biometric databases.