goldmonkey
18th August 2010, 04:12 PM
Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World. (http://www.fastcompany.com/1683302/iris-scanners-create-the-most-secure-city-in-the-world-welcomes-big-brother)
We've all seen and obsessively referenced Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's dystopian future, where the public is tracked everywhere they go, from shopping malls to work to mass transit to the privacy of their own homes. The technology is here. I've seen it myself. It's seen me, too, and scanned my irises.
Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls "the most secure city in the world." In a partnership with Leon -- one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million -- GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live -- not to mention marketers.
"In the future, whether it's entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris," says Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers. Before coming to GRI, Carter headed a think tank partnership between Bank of America, Harvard, and MIT. "Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years," he says.
Leon is the first step. To implement the system, the city is creating a database of irises. Criminals will automatically be enrolled, their irises scanned once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will have the option to opt-in.
When these residents catch a train or bus, or take out money from an ATM, they will scan their irises, rather than swiping a metro or bank card. Police officers will monitor these scans and track the movements of watch-listed individuals. "Fraud, which is a $50 billion problem, will be completely eradicated," says Carter. Not even the "dead eyeballs" seen in Minority Report could trick the system, he says. "If you've been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you're a known shoplifter, for example, you won't be able to go into a store without being flagged. For others, boarding a plane will be impossible."
GRI's scanning devices are currently shipping to the city, where integration will begin with law enforcement facilities, security check-points, police stations, and detention areas. This first phase will cost less than $5 million. Phase II, which will roll out in the next three years, will focus more on commercial enterprises. Scanners will be placed in mass transit, medical centers and banks, among other public and private locations.
The devices range from large-scale scanners like the Hbox (shown in the airport-security prototype above), which can snap up to 50 people per minute in motion, to smaller scanners like the EyeSwipe and EyeSwipe Mini, which can capture the irises of between 15 to 30 people per minute.
I tested these devices at GRI's R&D facilities in New York City last week. It took less than a second for my irises to be scanned and registered in the company's database. Every time I went through the scanners after that--even when running through (because everybody runs, right, Tom Cruise?) my eyes were scanned and identified correctly. (You can see me getting scanned on the Hbox in the video below. "Welcome Austin," the robotic voice chimes.)
For such a Big Brother-esque system, why would any law-abiding resident ever volunteer to scan their irises into a public database, and sacrifice their privacy? GRI hopes that the immediate value the system creates will alleviate any concern. "There's a lot of convenience to this--you'll have nothing to carry except your eyes," says Carter, claiming that consumers will no longer be carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: "When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in."
This vision of the future eerily matches Minority Report, and GRI knows it. "Minority Report is one possible outcome," admits Carter. "I don't think that's our company's aim, but I think what we're going to see is an enviroment well beyond what you see in that movie--minus the precogs, of course."
When I asked Carter whether he felt the film was intended as a dystopian view of the future of privacy, he pointed out that much of our private life is already tracked by telecoms and banks, not to mention Facebook. "The banks already know more about what we do in our daily life--they know what we eat, where we go, what we purchase--our deepest secrets," he says. "We're not talking about anything different here--just a system that's good for all of us."
One potential benefit? Carter believes the system could be used to intermittently scan truck drivers on highways to make sure they haven't been on the road for too long.
GRI also predicts that iris scanners will help marketers. "Digital signage," for example, could enable advertisers to track behavior and emotion. "In ten years, you may just have one sensor that is literally able to identify hundreds of people in motion at a distance and determine their geo-location and their intent--you'll be able to see how many eyeballs looked at a billboard," Carter says. "You can start to track from the point a person is browsing on Google and finds something they want to purchase, to the point they cross the threshold in a Target or Walmart and actually make the purchase. You start to see the entire life cycle of marketing."
So will we live the future under iris scanners and constant Big Brother monitoring? According to Carter, eye scanners will soon be so cost-effective--between $50-$100 each--that in the not-too-distant future we'll have "billions and billions of sensors" across the globe.
Goodbye 2010. Hello 1984.
The Eyes Have It: Why Iris Scanning Rules (http://www.fastcompany.com/1683572/qa-iris-scanning-cdo-on-minority-report-advertising-and-the-future-of-biometric-security)
Earlier today, we revealed the future of security and advertising -- and how it will all fall the watchful beam of a iris scanner. The company behind the technology, Global Rainmakers Inc., has big plans for the system, which is launching in the city of Leon, Mexico. To help wrap our heads around the project, we spoke with Jeff Carter, chief data officer of GRI, to find out how it will change our lives.
Fast Company: Why did GRI choose iris scans?
Jeff Carter: Well, one of the big problems in corporate America is reference data--that is, all the data that is about us. We don't have any way to link it all together. It's one of the reasons why your bank account doesn't reconcile until 48 hours later because there's all this data behind it that they have to execute manually.
When you look at the ways to link the data together, biometrics is the obvious choice. With a fingerprint, for instance, there's about 100 recognizable data points. For a really great fingerprint, you may get about 15 points--and that's if it's perfect. Of that, you only need 7 or 8 points to convict. So essentially, you only need 7 or 8 points across a huge population of people. It's one of the reasons fingerprints is causing so many problems.
With iris, you have over 2,000 points. Those 2,000 points appear when you're born. When you're in your mother's womb, your iris tears in a unique fashion. That tear stays constant until the day you die. If you die, and your body loses blood pressure, the eye flattens. So while a lot of what you see in Minority Report is very real today, the part about pulling out eyeballs is not real.
With those 2,000 points, you can create a unique 16,000 bit stream of numbers that represents every human on the planet. That provides a reference point that can connect everything you do in all aspects of life, for the first time ever.
What about other biometrics?
While fingerprints are not the best choice, they'll be part of the landscape for years to come. India right now is doing the world's first digital census. They're collecting fingerprints, face, and iris. Face is important -- our devices can capture face too. Voice biometrics are also huge. It's how the CIA monitors communication across the globe. They sift through cell phones and create voice biometrics to find Al-Qaeda members, for instance, and hit them in their car later with a missile. That is not going away either.
All those biometrics are important, but what are the two biometrics that you can use for a program that spans the globe? DNA and iris. Obviously DNA can't be captured from a distance. But that probably will happen in the not-too-distant future. So that leaves you with Iris.
What are some of the innovations of GRI's iris technology?
Iris has been around for a long time. The technology that really everyone uses except us was developed by John Daugman. His understudy was Dr. Keith Hanna, who is one of our founders and chief technology officer. He also invented the yellow line in NFL football. Those two individuals are the top iris specialists in the world. Daugman really focused on matching. So, once you had an image of an iris, how you would match it across a billion participants to make sure you had the right one.
Here's what is different with our technology. Hanna said, Anyone can match--it's simply a numbers game. He focused on acquiring the iris. In motion. From a distance. Even with the technology in airports several years ago, you had to hold still for about 30 seconds so it could find you. If you moved, it would blur. Most all of our competitors have that same issue. Ours is different. You can move.
So we've even worked with three-letter agencies on technology that can capture 30-plus feet away. In certain spaces, eventually, you'll be able to have maybe one sensor the size of a dime, in the ceiling, and it would acquire all of our irises in motion, at a distance, hundreds--probably thousands as computer power continues to increase--at a time.
Do you believe this technology will be more important for security forces or advertisers?
I just use advertising as an example because it's something we all have experience with. But it's really all aspects of life. I liken it to what happened when we went from radio to TV. It's just a different world.
But what's important for advertisers is that this technology will determine your geo-location based on the iris acquisition and your spatial location. So: Where are you in that space? And, based on how you are looking and moving, and your acceleration, what is your intent?
In a retail environment, determining intent will be very important. Are you coming into the store? Are you leaving? Do you have packages? Are you looking at a sign? A sale? Matching that intent based on a lot of preferences that are all opt-in.
How hypothetical is this technology?
It's not hypothetical at all. The time I spent at MIT and Harvard, they're already working on dramatic models that are able to determine intent from GPS and basic Web patterns. Again, an important concept to consider is that an iris fuses your digital and physical persona.
Right now, we can determine how many eyeballs are on a Web page. And what you look at and click. For the first time, we can do that in a physical world. If you look at this or that advertisement, and then go purchase the product advertised, we can tie those two things together.
Here's an example. If you ever purchase signage at airports, they'll give you lots of metrics on how many people walked past the sign each day. You can kind of guess what that means in terms of sales. It's very nebulous. We're going to make that very scientific.
We've all seen and obsessively referenced Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's dystopian future, where the public is tracked everywhere they go, from shopping malls to work to mass transit to the privacy of their own homes. The technology is here. I've seen it myself. It's seen me, too, and scanned my irises.
Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls "the most secure city in the world." In a partnership with Leon -- one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million -- GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live -- not to mention marketers.
"In the future, whether it's entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris," says Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers. Before coming to GRI, Carter headed a think tank partnership between Bank of America, Harvard, and MIT. "Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years," he says.
Leon is the first step. To implement the system, the city is creating a database of irises. Criminals will automatically be enrolled, their irises scanned once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will have the option to opt-in.
When these residents catch a train or bus, or take out money from an ATM, they will scan their irises, rather than swiping a metro or bank card. Police officers will monitor these scans and track the movements of watch-listed individuals. "Fraud, which is a $50 billion problem, will be completely eradicated," says Carter. Not even the "dead eyeballs" seen in Minority Report could trick the system, he says. "If you've been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you're a known shoplifter, for example, you won't be able to go into a store without being flagged. For others, boarding a plane will be impossible."
GRI's scanning devices are currently shipping to the city, where integration will begin with law enforcement facilities, security check-points, police stations, and detention areas. This first phase will cost less than $5 million. Phase II, which will roll out in the next three years, will focus more on commercial enterprises. Scanners will be placed in mass transit, medical centers and banks, among other public and private locations.
The devices range from large-scale scanners like the Hbox (shown in the airport-security prototype above), which can snap up to 50 people per minute in motion, to smaller scanners like the EyeSwipe and EyeSwipe Mini, which can capture the irises of between 15 to 30 people per minute.
I tested these devices at GRI's R&D facilities in New York City last week. It took less than a second for my irises to be scanned and registered in the company's database. Every time I went through the scanners after that--even when running through (because everybody runs, right, Tom Cruise?) my eyes were scanned and identified correctly. (You can see me getting scanned on the Hbox in the video below. "Welcome Austin," the robotic voice chimes.)
For such a Big Brother-esque system, why would any law-abiding resident ever volunteer to scan their irises into a public database, and sacrifice their privacy? GRI hopes that the immediate value the system creates will alleviate any concern. "There's a lot of convenience to this--you'll have nothing to carry except your eyes," says Carter, claiming that consumers will no longer be carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: "When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in."
This vision of the future eerily matches Minority Report, and GRI knows it. "Minority Report is one possible outcome," admits Carter. "I don't think that's our company's aim, but I think what we're going to see is an enviroment well beyond what you see in that movie--minus the precogs, of course."
When I asked Carter whether he felt the film was intended as a dystopian view of the future of privacy, he pointed out that much of our private life is already tracked by telecoms and banks, not to mention Facebook. "The banks already know more about what we do in our daily life--they know what we eat, where we go, what we purchase--our deepest secrets," he says. "We're not talking about anything different here--just a system that's good for all of us."
One potential benefit? Carter believes the system could be used to intermittently scan truck drivers on highways to make sure they haven't been on the road for too long.
GRI also predicts that iris scanners will help marketers. "Digital signage," for example, could enable advertisers to track behavior and emotion. "In ten years, you may just have one sensor that is literally able to identify hundreds of people in motion at a distance and determine their geo-location and their intent--you'll be able to see how many eyeballs looked at a billboard," Carter says. "You can start to track from the point a person is browsing on Google and finds something they want to purchase, to the point they cross the threshold in a Target or Walmart and actually make the purchase. You start to see the entire life cycle of marketing."
So will we live the future under iris scanners and constant Big Brother monitoring? According to Carter, eye scanners will soon be so cost-effective--between $50-$100 each--that in the not-too-distant future we'll have "billions and billions of sensors" across the globe.
Goodbye 2010. Hello 1984.
The Eyes Have It: Why Iris Scanning Rules (http://www.fastcompany.com/1683572/qa-iris-scanning-cdo-on-minority-report-advertising-and-the-future-of-biometric-security)
Earlier today, we revealed the future of security and advertising -- and how it will all fall the watchful beam of a iris scanner. The company behind the technology, Global Rainmakers Inc., has big plans for the system, which is launching in the city of Leon, Mexico. To help wrap our heads around the project, we spoke with Jeff Carter, chief data officer of GRI, to find out how it will change our lives.
Fast Company: Why did GRI choose iris scans?
Jeff Carter: Well, one of the big problems in corporate America is reference data--that is, all the data that is about us. We don't have any way to link it all together. It's one of the reasons why your bank account doesn't reconcile until 48 hours later because there's all this data behind it that they have to execute manually.
When you look at the ways to link the data together, biometrics is the obvious choice. With a fingerprint, for instance, there's about 100 recognizable data points. For a really great fingerprint, you may get about 15 points--and that's if it's perfect. Of that, you only need 7 or 8 points to convict. So essentially, you only need 7 or 8 points across a huge population of people. It's one of the reasons fingerprints is causing so many problems.
With iris, you have over 2,000 points. Those 2,000 points appear when you're born. When you're in your mother's womb, your iris tears in a unique fashion. That tear stays constant until the day you die. If you die, and your body loses blood pressure, the eye flattens. So while a lot of what you see in Minority Report is very real today, the part about pulling out eyeballs is not real.
With those 2,000 points, you can create a unique 16,000 bit stream of numbers that represents every human on the planet. That provides a reference point that can connect everything you do in all aspects of life, for the first time ever.
What about other biometrics?
While fingerprints are not the best choice, they'll be part of the landscape for years to come. India right now is doing the world's first digital census. They're collecting fingerprints, face, and iris. Face is important -- our devices can capture face too. Voice biometrics are also huge. It's how the CIA monitors communication across the globe. They sift through cell phones and create voice biometrics to find Al-Qaeda members, for instance, and hit them in their car later with a missile. That is not going away either.
All those biometrics are important, but what are the two biometrics that you can use for a program that spans the globe? DNA and iris. Obviously DNA can't be captured from a distance. But that probably will happen in the not-too-distant future. So that leaves you with Iris.
What are some of the innovations of GRI's iris technology?
Iris has been around for a long time. The technology that really everyone uses except us was developed by John Daugman. His understudy was Dr. Keith Hanna, who is one of our founders and chief technology officer. He also invented the yellow line in NFL football. Those two individuals are the top iris specialists in the world. Daugman really focused on matching. So, once you had an image of an iris, how you would match it across a billion participants to make sure you had the right one.
Here's what is different with our technology. Hanna said, Anyone can match--it's simply a numbers game. He focused on acquiring the iris. In motion. From a distance. Even with the technology in airports several years ago, you had to hold still for about 30 seconds so it could find you. If you moved, it would blur. Most all of our competitors have that same issue. Ours is different. You can move.
So we've even worked with three-letter agencies on technology that can capture 30-plus feet away. In certain spaces, eventually, you'll be able to have maybe one sensor the size of a dime, in the ceiling, and it would acquire all of our irises in motion, at a distance, hundreds--probably thousands as computer power continues to increase--at a time.
Do you believe this technology will be more important for security forces or advertisers?
I just use advertising as an example because it's something we all have experience with. But it's really all aspects of life. I liken it to what happened when we went from radio to TV. It's just a different world.
But what's important for advertisers is that this technology will determine your geo-location based on the iris acquisition and your spatial location. So: Where are you in that space? And, based on how you are looking and moving, and your acceleration, what is your intent?
In a retail environment, determining intent will be very important. Are you coming into the store? Are you leaving? Do you have packages? Are you looking at a sign? A sale? Matching that intent based on a lot of preferences that are all opt-in.
How hypothetical is this technology?
It's not hypothetical at all. The time I spent at MIT and Harvard, they're already working on dramatic models that are able to determine intent from GPS and basic Web patterns. Again, an important concept to consider is that an iris fuses your digital and physical persona.
Right now, we can determine how many eyeballs are on a Web page. And what you look at and click. For the first time, we can do that in a physical world. If you look at this or that advertisement, and then go purchase the product advertised, we can tie those two things together.
Here's an example. If you ever purchase signage at airports, they'll give you lots of metrics on how many people walked past the sign each day. You can kind of guess what that means in terms of sales. It's very nebulous. We're going to make that very scientific.