Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Futuristic biometrics at several airports

This is the first I have heard of iris scanners being used to get passengers through expedited security, but they (or fingerprint scanners) have already been in use at several airports. My thoughts:
1) This is not a step forward for liberty.
2) Ugh. Public-private partnerships.
3) If you are already flying anyway, and this speeds up you're travel time sufficiently to warrant the cost and intrusion, I can't fault you for using it. Just know that it is not *really* a good thing (see 1 and 2).

There is always a question of whether this would be appropriate if airports and airlines were operating on a completely free market. The key is that in that case, every action and association is voluntary, and competition would be able to assess consumer opinion. My guess is that, in a free market, airlines wouldn't care if you were who you said you were nearly as much as the government does. At least that's the way it used to be, not too long ago.