Fingerprints, eye scans stop suspects in tracks

0 Comments | USA TODAY, November, 2007 | by Richard Willing

The U.S. military needed construction workers, and one Iraqi civilian in particular looked like a good candidate. He dressed in a white robe and presented an Iraqi government-issued identification card when he applied for a job in Anbar province one day in 2006.

Then Marines working under Col. Gary Wilson did a quick photo scan of the Iraqi's eyeballs. The picture they took matched a database of suspicious persons that the Marines had been building.

"We told him, 'Hey, you (once) got picked up near where an IED went off, (and) you aren't who you say you are,'" Wilson says, referring to an improvised explosive device. The man was detained as an infiltrator.

The Defense Department wants to hear more of those kinds of stories, and it likely will if the...