The Changing Face of Biometrics

A man has his fingerprint scanned on a new biometric check in kiosk at London's Heathrow airport. The check in kiosk allows passengers to link a fingerprint scan to their passport details and avoid long queues at security.

A town hall employee shows a biometric passport (the so-called ePass) next to a scanner which displays the details in the chip contained in the passport at Berlin Mitte's town hall. The German biometric passports have been available since November 1st 2007.

A demonstration of how biometrics is used at the Clear express security lane at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, San Francisco was the ninth airport in the U.S. to offer the express security lanes which have attracted over 6,000 travelers at San Francisco International to sign up for the service which costs $99 per year and allows you to bypass long security lines.

A portable fingerprint scanner.

A man shows one of the 'biometric' harnesses to be used by the 33 miners trapped in the San Jose mine during their rescue operation, September 29, 2010 near Copiapo, 800 km north of Santiago. The harnesses will monitor and send wirelessly to the surface the vitals of the miner being hoisted: blood pressure, heart rate and breathing, constantly.

A portable iris scanner.

Finger scan for passenger at Dulles International Airport, in Dulles, Virginia.

A worker of Polish Bank BPS (Bank Polskiej Spoldzielczosci) shows how to withdraw money from a cash machine in Warsaw on using finger vein biometric technology.

A fingerprint is scanned in Sydney, Australia. Many governments are including biometric data such as fingerprints, iris scans, or facial recognition on a national identity card in a bid to combat fraud, illegal immigration and terrorism. Details of individuals' biometrics would be stored on the card in an algorithmic code to prevent identity theft.

A US Army soldier in the 1-71 Cavalry scans the eye of an Afghan National Police member for identification purposes with a handheld biometric device June 14, 2010 in rural Dand District, just south of Kandahar, Afghanistan. US soldiers of the 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division are using biometric tools to catalog all military-aged men and boys in Dand province, part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at finding and identifying Taliban insurgents and legitimizing the government of Afghanistan in the minds of the rural local populace.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy visits the biometric passport office at Laon city hall, northern France, March 2, 2010 during a visit on the future of the French civil service.

In 2009, then Home Office minister Phil Woolas had his fingerprints and photograph scanned as he enrolled for the National Identity card at Manchester passport office on November 16, 2009 in Manchester, England. Woolas, regional minister for the North West, was one of the first to enroll for a test of the new biometric identity card

A passenger gets his fingers scanned by an agent of the French customs police on October 19, 2009 at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle international airport, during the launch of the Passage automatis

A British Home Office employee displays an official British biometric ID card. Officials argued that the controversial identity cards would strengthen the country's security. The documents, which are issued to non-European foreign nationals, feature the holder's name and date of birth, as well as a photograph, fingerprint record and other biometric data.

A retinal scan is part of the process to get the CLEAR airport biometric 'fast pass' card during at Dulles International Airport, in Dulles,Virginia. CLEAR started this system in 2005, and has about 100,000 members that pay a yearly fee to be pre-screened with the advantage of expedited treatment at the security checkpoint. Many U.S. airports have the system and there are plans for more such verification services here and abroad.