New York Police Unveil Sci-Fi-Style Iris-Scanning Technology

(Nov. 16) -- In Manhattan, police reports are becoming a little bit more like "Minority Report."

The New York City Police Department unveiled iris-scanning technology on Monday designed to prevent criminal suspects from assuming false identities.

Authorities decided to start photographing suspects' eyes after two detainees facing serious charges were able to escape custody during arraignment by using the names of suspects facing minor charges, The New York Times reports.

New York Cops Unveil Iris-Scanning Technology

Mel Evans, AP

New York City police are using iris-scanning machines to determine the identities of criminal suspects. Police say the devices help ensure that suspects don't assume false identities, but civil rights groups worry the machines could be invasive of privacy.

So now, alongside the standard mug shots and fingerprints taken after arrest, some Manhattan detainees will peer into a device that looks something like "an ophthalmologist's eye machine," according to The Wall Street Journal.

Before facing a judge, suspects will gaze into the hand-held scanner, which is intended to double-check their identities by using high-resolution photographs to match unique patterns found in the colored parts of their eyes with images taken during an earlier examination.

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Police officials say the $500,000 program -- which will be extended to New York City's other boroughs before the end of the year -- is a way to keep potentially dangerous suspects from beating the system. But civil rights watchdogs say the sci-fi-style eye-scanning devices could strip New Yorkers of their privacy.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says police haven't proved that the eye scanners are necessary, cost-effective or reliable in properly identifying suspects.

"Whenever the police start collecting personal information and start putting it in a database, we become concerned," she told the press.

Read more at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.