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Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

Fingerprints aren't even particularly useful here.

Our irises are considerably more information-dense, accessible and stable over time as evidenced by the famous identification of Sharbat Gula: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/afghan.html

A close-up photo should be enough to reliably identify a person years after they went missing.

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> Our irises are considerably more information-dense

Someone should give you free cryptocurrency for a scan of your iris.

It’s already been done: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/10/21/sam-altmans-worldcoin-wa...

I suspect GP was being facetious.

Poe's law strikes again. Any joke about crypto scams has already been implemented for real...

As someone who wants to enter and profit from the burgeoning underground iris transplantation economy, where do I start? I get the sense that there is an arbitrage opportunity between the cost of eye surgery and crypto returns but exactly how do I capitalize on this?

(That was the joke.)

Still worth linking because that is quite an obscure reference.

Everest uses biometrics to tie your information to your wallet. The tech is actually pretty cool in my opinion - they have the Everest ID coin itself, but I am more interested in the identity management part of it.

I'm not sure I'm 100% on board, but the tech is really interesting and their approach to privacy seems much better than I would expect from an offering like that. The aim is to be able to offer Know Your Customer using their identity platform to a mulititude of services.

Everest.org is their site

While most people do have stable iris patterns it is not the case for everyone. Numerous conditions can cause changes in the eyes. Glaucoma being the most obvious one, but there are a whole host of other conditions like lisch nodules, Uveal melanoma, etc.

However, perhaps with training, identification could be made in spite of changes to the iris.

Interesting

The algorithms used are pretty robust - your typical iris scan won't be done with a fully opened eye and there's also the question of eyelashes. Some examples:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-outline-boundaries-s...

Interesting link, thank you. Sorry for the late reply. The idea of wearing camouflaged contact lenses, and the work to defeat the attempt is interesting.

But your irises don't tend to leave traces everywhere, and are thus only valuable for telling who you are, not where you've been.

Although that depends on the number of cameras around, access to them, and how much they are recording. Fingerprints are a lot simpler and easier to access.

Did not know that! How easily can irises be identified in person, though? Has a handheld scanner been developed yet?

Fingerprints can also be left on objects, which can be helpful for tracking someone.

Regular photo camera can take photos of irises

> Has a handheld scanner been developed yet?

Yes - I used one as far back as in 2010 on a science fair where we enrolled people to a research database.

A phone camera close-up should be enough in the right conditions, but additionally Samsung's Galaxy line used to include and iris scanner, which was just a near-infrared LED and a camera.

Yes, they were using them to catalog folks in Afghanistan

https://www.wired.com/2010/09/afghan-biometric-dragnet-could...

Of course, the Taliban were able to seize this collection of data.

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/17/afghanistan-taliban-mili...

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