How Biometrics Helped to Identify the Master Terrorist
When the U.S. military attacked Iraq in March 2003, it brought to bear the most advanced technology then available for identifying potential terrorists by their physical features. The equipment measured all sorts of physical features--from fingerprints to images of the retina--but it was not particularly easy to use. The apparatus weighed a hefty 50 pounds and consisted of a hardened laptop hooked up to a camera, an iris scanner and a fingerprint device. Eight years later, the toolkit used to identify Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout was probably a lot like one of the handheld devices that are now routinely used by thousands of U.S. soldiers throughout the world to compare people's faces against the images of many known or suspected terrorists. Dubbed the HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment , the instrument looks like an overgrown camera and weighs between 2 and 3 pounds. In addition,...