Disney adopts finger-biometrics to fight ticket fraud and resale

Published 5 September 2006

Move upgrades existing finger geometry readers; privacy advocates cry foul; Disney said to have considered facila recognition software

It is a small world after all, but even Disney World needs a way to keep track of its millions of annual vistors. In an attempt to reinvigorate a long-standing biometric response to ticket fraud and resale, the park plans by the end of September to replace its old finger geometry readers with finger-biometric scanners. The move has some privacy experts crying foul out of concern that visitor data will be used for reasons other than protecting ticket integrity, a worry Disney dismisses entirely. Adopting the common response to privacy worries, the company notes that it only stores numerical information created by the scan and not entire fingerprint images, and argues that the system is entirely seperated from other databases such as those used for marketing.

As noted above, Disney was an early adopter of biometric technologies. It also recently expressed interest in facial recognition software for crowd control purposes, meeting earlier this year with California-based A4Vision. Disney now says face recognition is “not something we’re currently looking at.”

-read more in Karen Harmel’s and Laura Spadanuta’s AP report [http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060903/NEWS/609030339]