-----Original Message----- From: zentara [mailto:zentara@zentara.net] Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 3:50 PM [...] If you want to do online e-commerce, your computer will need an "iris scanner". They will be cheap, and come in USB, SCSI, and paralell port models. When you order something, you will be asked to look into the eye-piece, to be identified. Everytime you renew your driver's license or ID card, your "iris scan" will be updated in the "big computer in the NSA's basement."

But...... "your iris scan" once it is taken, is just a file. It won't be a month after the USB, Bluetooth, or Firewire scanners have come on the market, that people will be selling software or modules that just present the digitized data from a file. Similarly, as soon as you walk up to a bank machine in a certain location, your iris-scan will be lifted to somebody's database and sold on the same market that does such a thriving business in fake drivers' licences and Canadian passports, etc. Once your scan data has gotten into the wrong hands -- and all it ever takes is one time -- then, that data is worse than useless as your "identity", for the rest of your life, or eternity... whichever comes first. The exact same can be said for *any* body-based scan. Any application that doesn't require you to be physically present, and proving by several parallel means that you are living and breathing, will be fooled by remote presentation of your stolen identity. Sure, it might work to screen access at physical locations where the system can also view you in infrared (to see that you've got blood actively circulating, in real time) and sample-and-parse your electromagnetic effluent and maybe sniff you for your personal body odor, while *also* scanning your iris... I think there are a few kinks to be worked out. /kevin