The future is now present. What we once saw in movies such as James Bond and Minority Report is now a reality in three different New Jersey Schools. The Freehold Borough School District iris scanning is the new identification process used to gain entrance into the public schools.

The National Institute of Justice, a research branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, gave the schools a safety grant of $369,000 which made this possible.

The installation of the technology began in the month of October. After two months of testing, the system is now in operation.

The iris scanning software application is developed by Eyemetric Identity Systems.

Eyemetric Identity Systems is a spin-off company of New Jersey Business Systems Inc. (NJBS), which specializes in biometric-based identification systems. The NJBS Company has been providing technology solutions since 1968. The success and national recognition of this project is the motivating factor of the development of Eyemetric Identification Systems.

The software application used in the identification system is the Teacher-Parent Authorization Security System (T-PASS), which was installed in the front office computers at the three schools. The school’s staff, employees, teachers and students are assigned access rights. Also, each child is capable of having up to four adults approved in the T-PASS system.

The control system controls entry access, visitor management and the capability to scan driver’s licenses from all 50 states and can automatically import the information directly into the database.

The iris scanning system takes a digital photograph of the iris, which is the color portion of the eye, each time a parent, teacher, school employee or administrator gains access to the school.

The picture of the iris is about 512 kilobytes of memory to match against other records in the database. The picture of the iris has up to 242 unique points. The best way to take identification compared to a fingerprint which has anywhere up to 7 to 22 points. The software keeps a log and digital record of any visitor entering the school.

Varela’s Head of Security, Enrique Gonzalez, feels that “that may work in a smaller school but with a school of 4,200 that is nearly impossible.” In a big school with too many exits and too many students “to keep track of everything will be too hard.”

Students such as Jorge Torres, sophomore, and Jerry Hills, junior, feel that they couldn’t deal with such a system “because it would make me feel like I am in jail,” and that “it is too much money to spend when it may not even work correctly.”