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New Jersey School Keeps an Iris on Visitors as Safety Measure When Jim Keelan picks up his three daughters from school in Freehold, New Jersey, he gets stopped at the doors. Before gaining entry he must look into a camera, which takes a photograph of his eye and compares it to a stored image. The procedure, mostly used at airports and research laboratories, may be coming to a school near you. Freehold's school district this year became the second in the U.S. to install iris scanners; the first also was in New Jersey. ``I feel more secure knowing no unauthorized person can just sign out my child,'' said Keelen, 40, a member of the school board and a civilian engineer program manager for the U.S. Navy. ``It's 100 percent positive identification.'' The safety of children has been a hot issue in New Jersey, which in 1994 became the first state in the nation to enact Megan's Law to protect children from sex offenders. A federal law passed two years later required other states to follow. Though Freehold hasn't had a kidnapping, sex offense or related incident on school property in at least the past three years, Board of Education President Peter DeFonzo says parents and schools can never be too safe. ``It's like insurance,'' DeFonzo said. ``You want to take it out ahead of time and prevent something from happening.'' Cost of Security The school district in Freehold, a suburban community of about 11,000 people located about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of New York, took advantage of a federal security grant to fund the $369,000 project. LG Group's LG Electronics supplied the cameras and other hardware, Hewlett-Packard Co. provided servers and software, and Eyemetric Identity Systems designed the system. The voluntary program began in January and about 300 of 1,500 parents and staff have signed up. Schools Superintendent Phil Meara said he expects more to join following conferences with teachers this month. Meara in 2003 helped oversee the first pilot iris- recognition program, while assistant superintendent of Plumsted Township School District in New Egypt, about 20 miles from Freehold. He applied for another grant at Freehold Borough to test an iris program with more sophisticated technology, such as newer cameras. ``We saw it as the future in terms of security,'' Meara said in a telephone interview. ``What appealed to us was that we could be part of a research grant and contribute to the body of knowledge on how to make schools safer.'' Until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, iris-recognition technology was mostly known as a device used in James Bond movies. Fears of attacks led government officials to invest in new technology to boost security. The grant given to the Freehold school is from the U.S. Justice Department. A Growth Industry Biometric devices use physical characteristics such as facial shape, fingerprints, voice or gait to confirm identity. The global biometrics industry is forecast to more than double its revenue to $5.7 billion in 2010 from $2.1 billion in 2006, according to the International Biometric Group. Passengers at Orlando International Airport can pay $79.95 a year to have their fingerprint and iris registered. They insert an ATM-like card into a machine that confirms their biometrics and lets them pass through airport security more quickly, airport spokeswoman Carolyn Fennell said. A program at Amsterdam's airport allows passengers from 29 European countries to pay to use iris recognition to zip through passport control and immigration. India's Andhra Pradesh state government has signed up 10 million people for ration cards using iris recognition, said David Johnston, vice president of worldwide marketing at LG Electronics. People Seek Security ``Biometrics has been a post-9/11 baby,'' Robert Allen, a biometric research analyst for Frost & Sullivan, said in a telephone interview from San Antonio. ``People have really tuned in to seeing more security in their lives.'' Every school day from about 8:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. New York time, buildings in the Freehold district are locked down and the iris cameras are activated. Parents and staff who participate in the program had their eyeballs photographed by a digital camera; the images are stored in the school's database, along with the participants' photos, addresses, phone numbers and names of children they are authorized to sign out, said Ray Bolling, president of New Egypt, New Jersey-based Eyemetric. After being admitted to the building, enrolled parents must have their irises photographed a second time in the front office before they can leave with a child, he said. The office computer pulls up their information and photo. The program requires visitors to wear a badge in the building with their photos and those of the children they are accompanying, Bolling said. Privacy Concerns Parents not in the program must be buzzed in by the front office, show identification and sign a timed log before taking a child from school. A bell sounds if someone tries to enter the school behind an authorized person. Some parents and teachers have declined to participate because of privacy concerns, Bolling said. He said participants' names and addresses are already in the district's computer system; only the iris image and photo are new. Freehold's network has firewalls and encryption to protect personal data, he said. ``There's this connotation that Big Brother is watching you,'' Johnston said. ``Biometrics are far more private than the information you give out every day.'' DeFonzo and Meara said they don't know of any parents who have complained about the technology. Other than a few glitches -- such as a television anchor who couldn't enter before the door relocked -- the iris system hasn't had technical problems, Meara said. He said he has no plans to make the imaging mandatory. ---------------------------------------------------
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