U.S. military buys portable iris recognition devices

Stamford, Connectiut-based SecuriMetrics, a wholly owned subsidiary of L-1 Identity Solutions, has received two orders from the U.S. military for its family of PIER portableiris recognition and enrollment devices. The orders have an aggregate value to L-1 of more than $2.5 million. The PIER devices will be used in connection with the military’s Biometrics Automated Toolset (BAT) System, used for positive identification, tracking, and visualization of what the military calls “persons of interest” and associated information using multi-modal biometrics in a scalable architecture environment. One order is from the U.S. Army for PIER 2.3 and PIER-T devices. The second order was placed by the U.S. Navy Spawar Systems Center for PIER 2.3 and 2.4 devices to be fielded by the U.S. Marine Corps.

Bruce Hanson, president of two L-1 subsidiaries, SecuriMetrics and Iridian Technologies, sang the praise of iris recognition biometrics:

Iris recognition continues to gain momentum as a non-invasive and fast means of identifying people of interest in the field…. The human iris contains massive amounts of detailed information unique to each individual, and because it is completely formed at 18 months of age and remains unchanged throughout one’s lifetime, it is one of the most stable and accurate biometric modalities available. The U.S. military’s continued use of iris-based recognition devices is evidence of its superior performance in the field where fast and precise identification of subjects can often be the difference between life and death.

The PIER, a rugged hand-held device, can store a database of up to 200,000 individuals (both left and right eye) and return the identity of the subject with high accuracy. When connected to an L-1 SIRIS matching engine, the PIER family of devices can be used to confirm an individual’s identity against a database of one billion records in less than one second.