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Comment by panarky | Hacker News Reader

  The N.S.A. collects iris scans of foreigners through other means.

No way that ordinary snapshots have enough resolution for iris scans. What "other means" could there be?

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The Army:

"Army Reveals Afghan Biometric ID Plan" http://www.wired.com/2010/09/afghan-biometric-dragnet-could-...

"Could Iris Scans Stop a New Iraq Insurgency?" http://www.wired.com/2008/08/maliki-vs-sois/

And probably by infiltrating other countries' iris-scanning of undesirables like refugees:

http://jordantimes.com/iris-scanning-technology-streamlines-...

How well do cosmetic contact lenses defend against this?

Start wearing them as a matter of course.

Reading these stories it seems the rationale is "lazy bureaucrats". Clearly where this ends up is putting all poor people into a "system" which ultimate serves the blind will of the faceless bureaucrats running it. The pretext is that this power is used to "help" the poor, but ultimately it will be used simple to keep the faceless people in power--come hell or high-water.Iris scanning refugees is basically akin to iris scanning for food stamps. Truly the banality of evil.

All non-citizens are photographed & fingerprinted by cbp when entering the US. Maybe that?

No they aren't.

Which ones aren't fingerprinted and photographed?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-VISIT

> The U.S. government states that the purpose of US-VISIT is to advance the security of both the United States and worldwide travel, through the use and sharing of biometric information for identity management. U.S. Department of State consular officers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers collect biometric information (digital fingerprints and a photograph) from all non-U.S. citizens between the ages of 14 and 79, with some exceptions, when they apply for visas or arrive at major U.S. ports of entry.[4]

There are "some exceptions", and it doesn't cover people under 14 or over 79.

The U.S. military has long been conducting biometric scanning in Afghanistan, as it was very successful in Iraq in helping identify insurgents and terrorists [1]

I would assume this is a major source, possibly along with the attempts to gain covert access to other nations' similar counter-terrorism biometric databases.

[1] http://www.wired.com/2010/09/afghan-biometric-dragnet-could-...

I remember listening to an interview of soldiers who had to iris scans of all the people we killed in Fallujah. 500+ corpses piled in rows, remove the sheet, scan biometrics, next.

Not sure exactly what the point was.

To see if they killed any known insurgents / high value targets. If they can mark them off the list then they can focus on getting the other ones / people that fill their empty position.

It's interesting, that by forcing/coercing/recruiting a single individual (say a patrol leader in Afghanistan) you can insert false information (say DNA, fingerprint and iris scan) into the database, so that when you drop your poor ignorant doppelgänger dead in a back alley in some country rife with civil war you can be taken off the list of targets...

Are suggesting that a multi-million dollar program can be defeated by a three-cent bullet and the will to do the deplorable?

Surely you jest--I suppose next you'll be asserting that you can cause billions of dollars of economic damage using only some box cutters!

I've heard second hand information about commercially available iris (not retina) scanners that can acquire 50 irises per minute from a rather large distance.

Maybe, hacking other country databases. Some countries like India have started a voluntary identification number (like social security number) program where they take all these biometrics. That would be too aggressive to be practical though.

> too aggressive to be practical

I'm pretty sure that's one of the only requirements for an NSA project.

Perhaps not general shots on Instagram, but a larger face picture might have a 80x80 pixel area on one eye. Not enough for a real iris scan maybe, but quite possibly enough to identity an individual?

And as high-DPI screens get more common, ordinary snapshots online will probably move up from the low resolutions they are now.

Part of US-VISIT perhaps?

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