The Border … Is You

Tomorrow, the House Homeland Security Committee is hosting a “Border Security Tech Fair.”


Vendors scheduled to participate include: Sightlogix, Scantech, Wattre, Hirsch, Bioscrypt, Cogent Systems, Cross Match, L1 Identity, Sagem Morpho, Motorola, L3 Communication, Authentec, Privaris, Mobilisa, and Lumidigm.


I don’t know all of these companies, so I made some educated guesses about the links (and I may have gotten the wrong division of Motorola), but it appears that fully 11 of the 15 participants are in the biometrics industry.


If you think for a minute that this is about the boundary line dividing the United States from its neighbors, I have a bridge to sell you. No wait — I have a “biometric solution” to sell you. Mobilisa, for example, is being used to run background checks on the citizens of Clermont County, Ohio.


Participants in the Homeland Security Committee’s lunch briefing are all in the biometrics industry. One of them, James Ziglar, wrote an op‐​ed in favor of a national ID in Monday’s New York Times. He claims it’s not a national ID, but then, he’s got a biometric solution to sell you.