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"What they're doing is taking a technology that was used to control access to high-level security venues and they're applying it to controlling access to a theme park," Coney said. "It's impossible for them to convince me that all they are getting is the fact that that person is the ticket-holder," said George Crossley, president of the Central Florida ACLU.
But Disney's Prunty downplayed privacy issues, saying the scanned information is stored "independent of all of our other systems," and "the system purges it 30 days after the ticket expires or is fully utilized." Visitors who object to the readers can provide photo identification instead – although the option is not advertised at the park entrance.
 Scanning fingerprint information isn't new to private businesses or the government, which scans fingerprints of visitors entering the country. But surprisingly, after the Sept. 11 attacks the federal government look for Disney’s advice in intelligence, security and biometrics, a tool that teaches computers to recognize and identify individuals based on their unique characteristics.
The federal government may have wanted Disney's expertise because Walt Disney World is responsible for the nation's largest single commercial application of biometrics, said Jim Wayman, director of the National Biometric Test Center at San Jose State University. "The government was very aware of what Disney was doing," he said. "Everybody's interested in a successful project."
Industry insiders say Disney has expressed interest in an even more advanced form of biometric technology - automated face recognition. It is the way to separate criminals and terrorists out of a crowd. Minnesota-based Identix Inc., which has contracts with the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, has been in contact with Disney. "Because it's a present day project, Identix is not at liberty to talk about it," said company spokesman Meir Kahtan said of the work with Disney on a face recognition system.
Another company, California-based A4Vision Inc., confirmed meeting with Disney officials in the past year to present its A4 facial recognition system to Disney. “They were interested," said A4Vision spokeswoman Suzanne Mattick. Prunty, however, said face recognition is “not something we’re currently looking at.”
A4Vision is funded in part by the Department of Defense and In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital firm for new technologies. Although Disney will not disclose who makes its fingerprint scanners, biometrics experts said the new technology is likely provided by New Mexico-based Lumidigm Inc.
Lumidigm also has received funding from the CIA as well as the National Security Agency and Department of Defense, according to founder and CEO Bob Harbour. The government has looked to Disney for advice on biometrics in the past. After 9/11, one Disney executive was part of a group convened by the Federal Aviation Administration and other federal agencies to help develop a plan for "Passenger Protection and Identity Verification" at airports, using biometrics.
The executive, Gordon Levin, also was part of a group asked by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Security Agency to develop national standards for the biometrics industry.
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