A new kind of skeletal scanner technology will manage to identify people from fifty meters away, reports say.

Designed to be used against the unlikely combination of “terrorists and pedophiles” (“Yes, hi…I’m a serial killer. Does that work on me?” “No sir, I’m sorry, it’s terrorists and pedophiles only.” “Oh, well then. Carry on.”), the scanner works by scanning skeletal features and then comparing the features found against a database of stored images.

It’s a simple enough concept–fingerprints can be misread or otherwise concealed, certain biometrics can be spoofed around, but it’s pretty much impossible to change one’s skeletal structure in any short period of time.  But the problem with it is that it’ll take the establishment of a massive database in order to be of any use, and subjects would have to already be in the database in order to be found–a serial killer’s first killing spree might well go uninterrupted by the new scanners because he or she just plain isn’t in the system.

And of course, there’s plenty of discomfort coming from the privacy community, who definitely does not like hardware that can identify a person roughly half a football field away.  But still, I’d look for these to start showing up pretty soon.
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