Desmond Backed Firm Signs US Biometric Deal With AAAE

Irish biometrics company Daon has signed a controversial deal in the US for tamperproof identification cards.

The Dermot Desmond backed firm has developed biometric technology to identify people by physical features such as fingerprints and eye scans.

It has signed the deal, which is potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE).

A proposed new US law charges The AAAE with managing contracts for a new airport security programme and ID cards to millions of transportation workers. Daon's competitors are outraged by the proposed law, according to US media reports, and are seeking to have it changed. The provision was written into the law at the request of Kentucky senator Harold Rogers, who chairs a Congress sub committee on US domestic security. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is a director of Daon, which sponsored an AAAE airport security conference last year. The New York Times quotes Walter G Hamilton, chairman of the International Biometric Industry Association, as saying that "it is very bad public policy to have an earmark that steers critical aspects of this key programme to a private organisation".

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