ICE has spent over $25M on iris scanners in no-bid contracts(www.npr.org)
39 pointsby ck23 hours ago5 comments
  • josefritzishere3 hours ago
    No-bid contracts are prohibited by FAR. So that's probably kickbacks.
  • ck23 hours ago
    When I saw them using Iris scanners in Iraq 20+ years ago, I just knew they were going to start scanning people in the US with them

    Keep in mind they are using them BEFORE a person is under arrest and even just protestors

    If they can do that, someday there is going to be exponential resolution advancement where a Flock camera can do it from a distance

    Imagine being able to walk up to a crowd and just iris scan everyone from a distance, that day is coming, it's just a technical limit for now (instead today they collect BLE and wifi mac addresses on your phones)

    • ex1fm3taan hour ago
      they did the same thing in Afghanistan and some scanners were found by the talibans once american soldiers left. Somebody even bought these from ebay and retro-engineered the software to access the data.

      Edit: Article from New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/technology/for-sale-on-eb...

    • NDlurker3 hours ago
      Swap out colored contact lenses frequently.

      Maybe someone will figure out how to make Rorschach style morphing lenses with thermochromic pigments.

      Edit: found these after doing some searches on diy contact lenses and thermochromic lenses

      https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220066236A1/en

      https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10643561/

    • wil4213 hours ago
      We’ve all seen minority report. Some executive somewhere is foaming at the mouth to scan your iris and connect the data broker dots when you walk into a store.

      I’m sure they’re already fingerprinting your iPhone or scanning your face when you walk into certain places. Some team is probably working on an Iris scanner.

      • vgeekan hour ago
        Pretty sure this is Sam Altman's Worldcoin's objective?
    • sbayg2 hours ago
      I wear my sunglasses at night.
  • tokai3 hours ago
    Are iris scans valid like fingerprints, where we just hand wave away that it might not be reliable?
    • AlotOfReadingan hour ago
      I'm not sure whether they're biologically unique (as fingerprints are not), but the way standard scanners work has both false positive matches and false negatives. NIST maintains benchmarks for biometric errors, which are usually in the tenths of a percent range.

      I guess you should hope none of your hundreds of thousands of iris neighbors are placed on the list?

  • dstnn2 hours ago
    Didn't the state of NY spend a lot more turning misdemeanors to felonies for Trump and Alvin Bragg?

    Were supposed to be nerds. We're supposed to be above the politics and just the facts