Iris Recognition

Iris recognition, as the name suggests, is a biometric verification method that utilizes the unique pattern of each person’s iris, the colored circular structure in the eye, to confirm one’s identity. More explicitly, the authentication process is realized by scanning an iris at a reasonable distance with a near-infrared light and comparing the acquired template to the already existing templates in the large database system.

Similar to face recognition and fingerprinting, iris recognition uses human biological characteristics to distinguish one person from the others, however, it is more preferable to the prior two technologies by the immanent attributes of eye’s iris, and these inherent attributes call our attention to privacy, consent, and security concerns that have come into view gradually as iris recognition has wider applications and more popularity over time.

Identity

Even though iris recognition does not guarantee to be perfectly correct all the time and many factors, like change of lighting, movement of heads, and using high-resolution photos of someone’s iris, affect the accuracy, iris recognition leaves less room for deceit because it is comparably more difficult to change one’s iris without seriously damaging eyes. In contrast, along the history of plastic surgery, the first documentation of surgical method applied to help people recover from injuries can be dated back to more than four thousand years ago, and within the recent decades cosmetic surgery techniques have matured and more people have adopted cosmetic surgeries to change or improve their facial appearances. The advancement of this field offers an opportunity for ill-intended people to successfully sneak through checkpoints for criminals. In terms of the flaws of using fingerprints for identification, there are multiple ways of altering one’s fingerprints. According to a report in Forensic magazine, FBIs have caught hundreds of suspects who tried to alter their distinctive marks at their fingertips by deep cuts, burning, biting, and using sandpaper to avoid detection.

Due to the high accuracy of iris recognition, many countries including UK and the United Arab States are using this technology for national ID for citizens and passport for travellers. As everything is a double-edged sword, the high accuracy of iris recognition causes serious consequences for identity stealing, as it is also very likely that it will become a substitute for other legal documents like drivers’ license and be applied to more situations where some sort of ID is required. Iris is not like fake paper documents that can be detected easily, and also if someone’s iris is stolen, it cannot be fixed easily like getting a new Facebook account because it is impossible for people to get new iris patterns or alter their eyes completely.

Privacy and Consent

Iris recognition requires less human interaction with scanners. While iris scanner only needs to convert iris patterns to data, face recognition demands scanning more facial parts to collect essential features and fingerprinting detection requires people to physically press their fingers on the machines. Within the recent years, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have increased the distance from which iris recognition is able to work to more than ten meters away from a moving subject.

Up till now, iris recognition has been used mainly by the U.S. military to identify captives in foreign battlefield, by police departments to surveil law-breakers, by the Department of Homeland Security to spot suspects on the watch lists, and by the law enforcements at the borders to identify smugglers and terrorists, but in spite of that, while more iris data are collected from people, it can be used for stalking against ordinary people without even their noticing it. Imagine while driving on the street, the surveillance camera can identify the driver easily at a far distance and even from the glance that the driver gives into the rear-view mirror. Or imagine while walking in the street, the camera knows about each person including who they are, whom they have met, whom their friends are, where they have been to at what time, and what their daily routines are. In this sense, iris recognition absolutely has a great potential to be used for stalking and invading people’s privacy if commercial iris scanners become cheaper and more accessible for the general public.

Another issue of consent relates to the way the law enforcements collects iris data. There have been reports from the New York Times that some police officers hold detainees longer than they should be merely because those people refuse to have their iris photographs taken. From the security point of view, iris records help police keep track of suspects if they try to escape from charges. Nevertheless, as far as most people are concerned, the data might be used to track defendants even after the charge is dropped or the case is closed. Iris data should be taken voluntarily, and the police have no right to force detainees to do so especially in the situations when there is no legislative authorization. How iris recognition should be employed definitely demands further serious and ad hoc consideration.

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_recognition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_surgery
https://www.forensicmag.com/article/2015/05/fbi-warns-about-altered-fingerprints
https://www.ibtimes.com/iris-scanners-widely-used-us-military-could-be-coming-police-department-near-you-1917018
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/nyregion/new-objections-to-nypds-iris-photographing-program.html