From "Blunkett wins backing for iris chip in passports":

David Blunkett won cautious support at home and abroad last night for the rapid development and use of biometric testing of travellers' eyes as a near-foolproof means of checking identity at international border crossings.

If successfully adopted on an international scale, new technology could head off pressure to introduce internal identity cards - "entitlement cards" as the home secretary hopes to call them - inside Britain, a controversial policy...

A scheme to equip British passports with biometric chips capable of storing details of the holder's fingerprint and iris pattern - both extremely hard to fake - is due to start by 2004-5, according to the passport agency.

The CNN report "France, U.S. back high-tech passport" has more of the same:

Police sources said the two states had agreed to jointly chair a working group of G8 states which will hammer out the technical norms for chip-driven identity papers of the future...

G8 states Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and Russia want the chip-based system to make it difficult for criminals or terrorists to steal identities.

The problem of identity theft was highlighted in February when a British pensioner was detained in South Africa after being mistaken for a big-time fraudster hunted by the FBI.

Well, if an OAP was incorrectly inconvenienced, then I'm convinced. Bring on the scanners! Plus, they tell me the iris scans are completely safe.

Links to my previous Mark of the Beast posts begin here.