LADY LIBERTY: FINGER, PLEASE

Wanna rent a locker at the newly-reopened Statue of Liberty? Then get ready to have your fingerprint read by an electronic scanner.
It’s one of several ways that biometric technology is now “creeping into everyday life,” the AP notes.

The Nine Zero, an upscale hotel in Boston, recently began letting guests in its $3,000-a-night Cloud Nine suite enter and exit by looking into a camera that analyzes their iris patterns. Piggly Wiggly Co. grocery stores in the South just launched a pay-by-fingerprint system, though pilot tests elsewhere have had lukewarm results…
Feelings seemed mixed about the lockers at the Statue of Liberty on a muggy New York afternoon last week.
Some people were befuddled by the system and had to put their fingers on the reader several times before a scan was properly made. Others forgot their locker number upon their return, or didn’t remember which finger they had used to check it out. One young woman accidentally put her ticket to the statue in the locker, requiring her to open it and then re-register it all over again with another finger scan.
With all the confusion, lines at the three touchscreen kiosks that control the bank of 170 lockers frequently stretched six or seven people deep, requiring a five-minute wait.

August 12th, 2004 | Homeland Security, You can run... | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.