Kind of like GPS.
FBI's Facial Recognition Program: Better Security Through Biometrics. The FBI's facial recognition technology is a boon for law enforcement--and perhaps soon for enterprise and consumer security as well. (Information Week)
An important and often overlooked topic broached in the article is whether the more profound applications of biometric ID management technologies will be in commercial processes rather than law enforcement.
Deciding whether or not to incarcerate someone is very different than deciding whether to transfer property from a store owner to a customer. Naturally, different standards of identification and ID certainty will apply. I continue to think that private sector application of biometrics will eventually dwarf deployments in the public sector because in the private sector biometrics simply have to help people confront existing challenges better than the status quo coping mechanism. In the ultimate law enforcement setting, a court of law, they have to clear a standard that becomes less actuarial and more closely approximate of perfection in individual circumstances.
