Nsa Endorses The Child Project

The National Sheriff's Association (NSA) has officially expressed its support of The Children's Identification and Location Database, also known as "The Child Project." The project, which is currently seeking grants, is a coast-to-coast network and registry that will rely on iris recognition biometric technology to help locate and identify missing persons. The Child Project will use digital images of people's irises as a method of identification to be stored with individuals' demographic data. Law enforcement will be able to access the data to obtain positive identifications within seconds. The system will be hosted in Phoenix at the headquarters of a nonprofit agency called The Nation's Missing Children Organization & Center for Missing Adults. The agency, which works with police and citizens, provides assistance on searches, distributes data, and conducts child safety programs. Individuals who volunteer to participate in The Child Project must look at a digital video camera, which captures their unique iris patterns. Iris recognition technology is useful because it allows one-to-many searches instead of one-to-one searches as with fingerprint systems. In addition, files needed to store iris data are much smaller compared to those for fingerprints--512 bytes compared to 1.5 MB--thereby making the data easier to store and access.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Sheriff (10/04) Vol. 56, No. 5, P. 60 .