It’s a little strange to cite the threat of corporate surveillance when talking about iris scanning, because the concept’s most famous appearance in science fiction is … corporate surveillance. In the film Minority Report, advertisers use iris scanners to serve personalized billboards to people as they walk by, which call out to them by name: “John Anderton! You could use a Guinness right about now.”
I proposed a different hypothetical to Savvides: What if a political activist, trying to flee a repressive regime, was identified by his or her irises and apprehended?
“You used that example, and I actually want to use that example because I had that discussion just now with a non-profit,” Savvides replied.
“One of the biggest world problem is human and sex trafficking: kids being abducted and trafficked across borders. And if there was such a system at the borders that could identify them, you don’t know how much their own governments want that, because they cannot control how many poor children are being abducted and sold to other countries,” he said.
“That is more often than once a decade, there is some prisoner who may be high-profile. This happens every day, every second, in some country. I would go to sleep at night very peacefully knowing that I saved a 5-year-old child that had been transported across the country.”
Seraphim Global, a Virginia-based non-profit which works to stop trafficking, confirmed they are working with Savvides.