
Re: It will be useless
It depends what you mean by "useless". To effecitvely catch criminals? Probably. To build a massive database of biometrics? Much more useful. And when the machine decides that *someone* is the person they're looking for, who's going to doubt its word? The US history of law enforcement shows it doesn't always matter to them if they got the right guy. As long as they got one, they can get a conviction.
And of course, cameras in 2001 had a crappy resolution, and passports did not even contain electronics back then. So that's really an apples and oranges comparison. And since then, documentaries like "CSI" and "NCIS" have educated the public at large on the infallibility of image comparison to catch bad guys.