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Technology Stocks : Identix (IDNX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nancy McKinney who wrote (16181)	1/4/2000 12:31:00 PM
From: brad greene	Respond to of 26039

Nancy, The government already knows all of these things about you. You leave a paper trail a mile long....everybody does. I'm sure there are many federal agents tracking your every move. There may be many more agents tracking me.......because I often post about how inefficient the government is. I really don't think the government has the man power or the desire to track ordinary citizens. If the government wishes to investigate you......then they will plant your home with bugs and cameras and stuff like that....declare you a national security risk....or something. But I don't think they do this unless they have a reason to believe that you are in need of investigation......nor do they have the time to single out ordinary citizens for this treatment. I would think it is like my lawn.......I do not monitor each blade of grass......but I will go out and pull a weed, if I see one. Even if I had the ability to monitor each blade of grass......I wouldn't.....because my wife would have me sent to an asylum. Having biometric information available to the government will not lead to a police state....IMO.....I think it will just give them better tools to do the job we want them to do.....which is to identify the really bad people, and to protect us from them. Heck....I'm much more frightened about handing my credit card to some 7-11 clerk....than I am from the government. I think you will find that the first wide spread applications of an index finger scanner will be well excepted by the public.......I can't imagine a problem with using a fingerprint to match an airline passenger to their luggage. 99% of the flying public will understand the reasoning.....and be in favor of it. The other 1% are more than welcome to take a bus.....IMO. bg ps. The real problem, IMO, is the gosh darned radio waves from Mars......I'm sick and tired of having to wear this aluminum foil hat! <g>

To: Nancy McKinney who wrote (16181)	1/4/2000 12:31:00 PM
From: David	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26039

You are confusing this technology with a different type of technology. It is true that the FBI maintains a massive amount of fingerprint data for criminal justice purposes. When a suspect is fingerprinted on a tenprinter (costing tens of thousands of dollars), the images of his fingerprints are compared to millions of images in West Virginia in the AFIS system and, if there is a match, he can be identified even though he attempts to maintain anonymity. I guess you could call that an invasion of his privacy, although the law would not recognize him as having privacy rights in that situation. What you have in the authentication system is something entirely different. There is no large 'identification' database. Instead, there is an identified template, which you voluntarily created at enrollment in the system; the template is probably only associated with a particular password, instead of your name. It may be held in a server somewhere, or it could -- sometime soon, we hope -- be held on the smart card you carry in your wallet or purse. In either event, when you present yourself to the biometric device, it has no idea who you are. You need to key in your password. The device then communicates with the part of the system that has your password/template and asks the simple question: "Does this new biometric scan match the biometric information associated with the password just provided?" If yes, the transaction goes forward. No one has 'identified' you; the system has only verified you as the proper holder of a password. Get it?