That's straight out of Minority Report. Governments are going to really eat that up since it will allow them to really track everyone everywhere. Watch for the ban on sunglasses.

That's pretty wild. And that list of tags at the bottom of the article promises to help me waste sooooo much time.

<puts on a pair of commercially available colored contact lenses>

Oops.




-karma

I work with IR illumination of eyes in my lab. Demerzel's got it pretty much right. It's not harmful. Not at the levels required for good illumination. And we use sustained illumination for periods of an hour or more, not a quick flash.
What I'm not 100% sure about is if you're using illuminators bright enough to light a subject 3m away, what happens when some dope puts his eye right up to it? I imagine that at that range you could do some damage, but even then it's my intuition that you'd experience discomfort and stop doing it before you did any permanent damage.

edit: I thought of more to say.
The amount of IR they'd be using isn't significantly more than the amount of IR you get from a normal (visible) camera flash. It's not like they're blasting you with some strange wavelength you never encounter. It's just like the IR from a camera flash, minus the visible parts.

I'm so glad I don't live in the US. Homeland security my ass.

Anyway, on topic: It's still only 3 meters. Not that effective yet, though it would work in doorways, I suppose. Go shades and contact lenses! Also, with cybereyes you could probably avoid having iris patterns at all, and quite legally too.

It's just more expensive infrastructure crap to get blown up by a suicide bomb.

*shrug* Meh. Being monitored does not, in and of itself, mean being controlled. Public space belongs to the public; your actions in them should not be considered private or anonymous. As world population increases, and travel more instant, there have to be better measures against people disappearing. Anonymity leads to actions without fear of consequences. I'm not really afraid of losing that.

But then, whenever I played Alpha Centauri, I always played as the Hive.

In a perfect world I'd say that you have a point, but the problem is that in this world as well as in the Sixth power tends to corupt, and majorities everywhere feel the right to impose upon the minority.

So yes, in this world being monitored does lead to being controlled.

Sunglasses and colored contats aside I wounder how some procripion eye-glasses would effect this system. Consitrer for the moment that glass is obacie in IR light I'm not shoure what the duralite leses are like in IR how ever any one know or better yet find out?

Well, my old photo-sensitive glasses did not go black from a camera flash so likely no effect. And glass is IR-transparent IIRC.

I like the system. Quite a few "things" would have been in prison far earlier if those where around. It's not like repeat rapists and child molesters are the smartest guys around.

Oh NO! someone might identify me as I attempt to make entry into a private installation. I might be identified as the person I actually am! IN PUBLIC of all places!

/sarc

Iris scanning is so 1984.

We use brain intention scans now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,...2009217,00.html

If you flipped out about the iris scans, this will make you huddle in a corner.

A 70% accurace rate with cooperative subjects means that it's completely useless so far. It'll be interesting to see how far they can take it, but I won't be holding my breath.

That system used computed tomography. CT is regarded as a moderate to high radiation diagnostic technique. They need some serious work to make this into an unobtrusive technique that can be done at 3 meters without your knowledge...

A 70% accuracy rate at telling the difference between addition and subtraction in cooperative subjects. It isn't anything new. Computed tomography has been around since 1971. They're just looking at CT scans of the brain, identifying patterns, and associating them with specific intentions. There is nothing new there, really.

I do believe that the top picture in this article should explain why there isn't going to be a useful crime-prevention brain scanner any time soon.