DARPA’s Moving Target Retina Scanning Makes Me Want To Wear Sunglasses [Espionage]

Retinal scanners have tended to be rather clumsy devices, conditions need to be ideal to get a good read. The person being scanned needs to stand still in front of the scanner – then hopefully an eyelash doesn’t get in the way. It is for this reason that the latest retinal scanning developments from DARPA and Southern Methodist University are big news – if their claims are to be believed, not only do subjects not have to be standing in front of the camera, they don’t even need to be standing still.

Theoretically, the new scanner would be able to scan multiple subjects from a crowd, and because the scanner does not have to capture the whole eye to get a reading – a partial scan is all that is needed.

Something to think about the next time you go to a demonstration.

[Uber-Review via DViCE]

OLED ID cards creepy, probably helpful [ID]

I question the actually utility of this, except for in corporate ID badging. It is cool though, combining OLED, RFID, and 3D into an ID. Plus, how is that for an alphabet soup of acronyms?

[CrunchGear via NetbookNews]

Google Earth Will Track Cars and People In Real Time [Google Earth]

This is one of the awesomestest and scariestest technology demonstrations I've seen in a long while: Georgia Institute of Technology's students are using CCTV video to map actual vehicles and people into Google Earth. Why is this scary?
Right now, all the data displayed is anonymous, which makes up for a cool looking technology. You could see a football game in real time or the actual traffic in your route to work. Eventually, you will be able to see clouds moving, the weather changing, and even birds move in real time.
Now, put on your tin foil hat and imagine.
Imagine that someone is able to tag you in some way. In theory, it could be as easy as having access to one of the CCTV cameras and this system. You mark a car on the screen and, provided that you have enough cameras along the way, the technology would be able to follow the vehicle wherever it goes. In England, for example, this will be really easy to do, because there are CCTV cameras absolutely everywhere. And let's not talk about RFID tags.
Of course, I'm sure that no government agency will be interested in using this for controlling someone's movements. Why would they?
Now, excuse me while I go pack and move to an island in the Maldives.
[Gizmodo via PopSci]