Negative Impacts

• Iris scanning is a relatively new technology and is incompatible with the very substantial    in-vestment that the law enforcement and immigration authorities of some countries have already made into fingerprint recognition.

• Iris recognition is very difficult to perform at a distance larger than a few meters and if the person to be identified is not cooperating by holding the head still and looking into the camera. However, several academic institutions and biometric vendors are developing products that claim to be able to identify subjects at distances of up to 10 meters (”stand off iris” or ”iris at a distance”).

• The iris is a very small organ to scan from a distance. It is a moving target and can be obscured by objects such as the eyelid and eyelashes. Subjects who are blind or have cataracts can also pose a challenge to iris recognition, as there is difficulty in reading the iris.

• As with other photographic biometric technologies, iris recognition is susceptible to poor image quality, with associated failure to enroll rates.

• The camera used in the process needs to have the correct amount of illumination. Without this,it is very difficult to capture an accurate image of the iris. Along with illumination comes the problem with reflective surfaces within the range of the camera as well as any unusual lighting that may occur. All of these impact the ability of the camera to capture an accurate image.The system linked with the camera is currently only capturing images in a monochrome format.This results in problems with the limitations of grey scale making it difficult to distinguish the darker iris colourations from the pupils.

• As with other identification infrastructure (national residents databases, ID cards, etc.), civil rights activists have voiced concerns that iris-recognition technology might help governments to track individuals beyond their will.

reference:

Seema Sheoran, writer and author of IRIS RECOGNITION - A BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY,

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/52565425/Iris-Recognition>