My Term Paper (Blog#5)

My term paper is about the implementation of the iris recognition technology as security systems from highly restricted areas to personal properties. This tackles a lot about biometrics and how beneficial it is to society.

In today's world, crime rates and threats to national security have increased. Everyone has nurtured and prioritized their greed too much that almost everyone has become anyone's next victim. Relying solely on the protection of the law isn't enough for guaranteed safety because today's generation is a race for technology advancement. We are living in a world with ghastly-minded people who have tried all sorts of improving the current applied sciences and boosting electronics to the next level all for man's convenience. This has been going on from time to time and even faster in the 21st century that even hashed passwords can be successfully decoded by almost anyone from professional web hackers to plainly obsessed teenagers. Apart from electronic safety, everyone is well aware that keys and cards are prone to loss. There is no possible assurance that one will never lose his or her key. Notions about answers to these problems are now often discussed and all led to Biometrics as the solution.

Biometrics is the art of identifying a person through her physical features, often through recognition. The iris recognition technology is a biometric system that is based on comparison of the recently taken image of the iris pattern with the one stored on the database. From the images captured, mathematical representations of the iris can be made by filtering the image with varying algorithms. These templates contain unique points of a certain person's iris. It also takes into consideration the correlation of the points. A good thing about this technology is that its subject is an iris. The iris is an intrinsic part of our body, in particular, our eyes. It is formed during our eight month gestation and is permanent from then on. Our irises' pattern cannot be altered unless one undergoes certain eye operations such as refractive surgery, cataract surgery and cornea transplants. Its permanence makes its first enrollment enough to last for a lifetime. Hence, there will be stability. This is also its edge against other biometric systems like fingerprint technology. The fingerprint technology uses fingerprints from our fingers, of course. But the downside is our fingers can be cut or scratched due to external factors. In comparison with the voice detection technology, our voice changes over a short period of time. Therefore, it is not stable. This proposes that the iris recognition technology is accurate, precise and reliable.

Aside from accuracy, the iris recognition technology has other benefits. At the point of image acquisition, one can stand even 10cm away from the camera. This means that you can stop worrying about being prone to infections or diseases because no physical contact is made. Also, it cannot be fooled by spoofing. The use of contact lenses causes little changes to the image taken but the template created will still be accurate. Eyeglasses will also not affect the recognition technology. Same foes for sunglasses. But glasses which are highly polarized are too strong for the technology. This will lead to a false reject rate in the system. It will cause an error and the individual can no longer go on with the process nor gain access to the area or to the account.

Several countries have also proven the iris recognition technology's efficiency and commitment to its promise of providing safety, accuracy and convenience. It has helped them in giving privilege to their frequent travelers, confirm identities for their laborers and check on their immigrants who would overstay their applied visas. It is sustainable and trustworthy.