-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Information_technology] Daily News 09/26/02 Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 09:00:48 -0500 From: "NIPC Watch" <nipcwatch@private> To: "Information Technology" <information_technology@private> September 24, The Washington Post FBI fingerprint research helps spawn an industry. To a large extent, the modern biometrics industry was born out of efforts to commercialize the Federal Bureau of Investigation's groundbreaking fingerprint scanning technology. In the mid-1960s, the FBI asked researchers at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) to study the feasibility of using technology to "read" the unique ridges and whorls of human fingerprints, said Robert Last, a computer specialist and acting section chief in the FBI's national fingerprinting division. Delivered to the FBI in 1972, the first prototype device based on that research was several feet tall, nearly as wide and "extremely slow," Last said. The device couldn't run comparisons and was only capable of scanning fingerprints and converting the ridge and whorl patterns into empirical data points. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56742-2002Sep23.html September 24, The Washington Post Military, private sector rush to adopt high-tech security technology. Deep in the Pentagon, an Army officer approaches a gray box affixed at roughly eye-level beside a wooden office door. The officer stares at the box, training his eye on a circular mirror about the size of a half-dollar. "Identification is completed," purrs a computerized female voice as the lock clicks, permitting the officer to pass. The slick plastic box, a device that scans iris patterns and compares them to a database of iris images taken from personnel who are cleared for entrance, is just one of a widening array of products designed to identify individuals by their unique physical characteristics. Source. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56706-2002Sep23.html _______________________________________________ Information_technology mailing list Information_technology@listserv http://listserv.infragard.org/mailman/listinfo/information_technology
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