ABU DHABI, 5 Sep, 05 (WAM) - The UAE's successful model ofiris recognition, an automatic and rapid method for determiningpersonal identity used at the country's exit and entry points,is being sought by several governments including the UK, ProfessorJohn Daugman, father of the technology said here yesterday.
The UAE was the first country in the world to have introducediris recognition. It was launched soon after the January 2003amnesty granted by UAE authorities to illegal immigrants to leavethe country. Since then over 47,000 banned foreigners have beenarrested while attempting to re-enter the country, reports inthe UAE's dailies said.
Dr Daugman's application has a very high confidence, by mathematicalanalysis, of the random patterns that are visible in the irisof a person's eye from some distance. His algorithms for thisprocess are the basis of all currently deployed iris recognitionsystems and have been licensed internationally, particularlyin airports where governments allow the process to substitutefor a passport.
On the UAE's experiment, Dr Daugman told a Press conferenceat the General Directorate of Abu Dhabi Police that it is themost important in the world and the first large scale deploymentof the iris recognition.
He described the UAE's decision to introduce the technologyas "wise", adding that the country had set model to be followedby other countries.
Dr Daugman said he presented the study on the experiment toLt-Gen Shaikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Interior,at their meeting on Saturday.
The ministry requires iris recognition tests on foreigners enteringUAE from all air, land, and seaports. Via Internet links eachtraveller is compared against each of 790,000 expellees (foreignnationals expelled for various violations), whose Iris Codeswere registered in a central database upon expulsion. Approximately200 billion iris comparisons have been performed so far, he pointedout.
Col Ahmed N. Al Raisi, Director-General of the General Directorateof Central Operation at Abu Dhabi Police, said since the launchof the system, some 47,385 matches have so far been found betweenpersons on the watch list and persons seeking re-entry. All ofthese matches have ultimately been confirmed by other records,he added.
On how secure and accurate is the system, Dr Daugman said afalse match probability does not accumulate in such large exhaustivesearches, when the vast numbers of cross-comparisons generatevast opportunities for false matches.
"The mathematical feature of my algorithms defeats accumulationof error probability," he explained.
"Iris recognition technology combines computer vision, patternrecognition, statistical inference, and optics. Its purpose isreal-time, high confidence recognition of a person's identityby mathematical analysis of the random patterns that are visiblewithin the iris of an eye from some distance.
"Because the iris is a protected internal organ whose randomtexture is stable throughout life, it can serve as a kind ofliving passport or a living password that one need not rememberbut can always present.
'Because the randomness of iris patterns has very high dimensionality,recognition decisions are made with confidence levels high enoughto support rapid and reliable exhaustive searches through national-sizeddatabases," he said.
The algorithms for iris recognition were developed at CambridgeUniversity by John Daugman. The idea of the technology struckhis mind some 15 years ago, he said.
According to him, the major applications of this technologyso far have been substituting for passports (automated internationalborder crossing), aviation security, and controlling access torestricted areas at airports, database access and computer login,access to buildings and homes, hospital settings, including mother-infantpairing in maternity wards, "watch list" database searching atborder crossings, and other government programmes.
In Britain, these algorithms are currently being consideredfor biometrically enabled National Identity Cards and passports,with feasibility trials soon to begin. Several airports worldwidehave installed these algorithms for passenger screening and immigrationcontrol in lieu of passport presentation.
Expressing happiness for the success story, Col Raisi said theUAE's model would be patented under the Emirates name. It wouldbe exhibited at international specialised forums including theUS and the UK.
The study will be documented at the Police Research Instituteto benefit other interested governments and experts.
