Consultant Rathburn said face-recognition technology has not progressed far enough in terms of speed and reliability to screen masses of people for admittance to large public events. But that day will come, he said. You ll have thousands of these boxes in the ceilings mounted above cameras, he said. It s just one additional layer that somebody has to penetrate. We re half the solution.
Intelligence gathering is the other half.
Atik, whose firm s Jersey City offices overlook New York Harbor directly across from the site of the World Trade Center, was in Orlando on Sept. 11, for an annual meeting of the Biometric Consortium, where he was scheduled to speak. The convention was canceled. The industry and government-sponsored group was formed in late 1995 to promote standards. Biometrics was growing even when other high-tech sectors were depressed, but the Sept. 11 events were a watershed. One of our challenges is to enhance security in a significant and quantifiable fashion, said Biocentric Solutions CEO Martin Janiak.