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| Former Employees |
Former Disney employee Eric Haseltine vice president of research and development at Walt Disney Imagineering left his post as in 2002 to become associate director for research at the NSA. Now he is assistant director for science and technology of National Intelligence Director.
Another former Disney employee, Bran Ferren, has served on advisory boards for the Senate Intelligence Committee and offered his technological expertise to the NSA and the DHS. Lumidigm's Harbour did not confirm or deny the company's role as the provider of Disney’s new scanners but said it has a "major theme park" as a client.
Disney's choice of a fingerprint sensor worries some privacy experts, especially when compared with a finger geometry reader. "It's more information," EPIC's Coney said. "That's why law enforcement agencies have relied on fingerprints for so long."
Disney’s Prunty said the company’s system will not be linked to a law enforcement fingerprint database. "Truly the only application is to link the ticket with the numerical value," she said.
Industry experts, including Anil Jain, who holds six patents in fingerprint matching, believe that Disney's new machines scan the entire fingerprint, even if they only store the numerical information. Lumidigm’s Harbour said the system designed for his theme park client is not compatible with a federal law enforcement database, saying, "Their protocols don't store images."
However, Raul Diaz, Lumidigm’s vice president of sales and marketing, said it is "easy" to change a system from capturing numerical information to storing an entire fingerprint image. "It's a software option," Diaz said. "It's changing just one command." Diaz said few, if any, companies store the fingerprint images due to privacy concerns.
Coney fears Disney could share the fingerprint information. "If they maintain that data, it can be used for anything," Coney said. "If law enforcement shows up, they can gain access to it." Disney's privacy policy says that it may disclose personal information when doing so can help "protect your safety or security."
While Walt Disney World in Orlando is the only Disney location to use this biometric technology at its entrances, other theme parks – such as Sea World and Busch Gardens – have begun to use similar technology.
Civil rights experts fear the use of biometrics by government and private companies will escalate without proper privacy protections. But industry officials say Disney’s extensive use of the technology is a sign of things to come.
"It helps public perception to have biometrics deployed on a widespread basis," said Joseph Campbell, the former chairman of the Biometrics Consortium. "The more people use biometrics, the more people are comfortable with it."
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