Pentagon Wants Smartphone Biometric Scanning Tool

The Pentagon wants soldiers to be able to scan people's faces, eyes and thumbs with their smartphones.

That's why the Department of Defense has inked a $3 million deal with California-based tech company AOptix, to develop its "Smart Mobile Identity System," as first reported by Wired's Military blog Danger Room.

AOptix is working on a tool that can be added to a regular smartphone and turn it into a device that can scan eyes, thumbs, voices, and faces. "They’ve asked us, based on what they’ve seen of our product, to work on some more specific needs and requirements for DoD," Chuck Yort, AOptix’s vice president for identity solutions, told Wired.

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The Smart Mobile Identity System will be able to scan those biometrics at a certain distance, and do so much more easily than current systems like the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection System (HIIDE), that consists of a bulky camera. AOptix's device will be considerably smaller, since it's supposed to simply wrap around a smartphone.

The company now has two years to develop the hardware system as well as the software to complement it.  Mashable