Biometric Security Devices

Occasionally on jobs we run across a client that has WAY too much money and wants to explore the possibilities for installing biometric scanners to restrict access to their server room (or other secure places). This is your typical Mission Impossible stuff: fingerprint scanners, retinal scanners, etc. Now this is mostly an electrical engineering thing, so usually I just nod and smile as the electrical guy winces and grits his teeth. Not that they’re overly difficult or anything. They’re just uber-expensive and generally a pain in the ass to connect to security systems that haven’t been designed to support such things.

Anyway, the following is an amusing tale I was told by an electrical colleague a few weeks ago. We were at a design meeting (with no client reps present) and mockingly discussing said client’s request for biometric information. After we have a good chuckle about how they’re not going to be able to afford this stuff, even though they’re a very high profile law firm, the electrical engineer, let’s call him Bob, tells us this story from a job he had worked on previously.

I don’t remember if it was an oil company or another law firm, but suffice it to say, they certainly had the money to spend on biometrics. Bob dutifully puts together a presentation on the pros and cons for each type of biometric device, costs, and security comparisons to more traditionally devices. This presentation is to the complete design team, as well as a half dozen of the big wigs for the client. It’s a meeting room full of high powered individuals. He’s just gone through fingerprint scanners and is about to move on to retinal scanners.

“So another option you can consider is rectal scanners.”

Stunned silence and blank stares. Bob realizes what he’s said. He has suggested to these people that have way more money and influence and prestige than he’ll ever have that they scan their butts to gain access to their server room. Oops. Eventually there’s laughter as everyone realizes the verbal slip up, but there was a long, painful moment when no one was sure if he was serious or not.

We’re all laughing uproariously at this point, at Bob’s expense. And then he throws in this quip defensively:

“Well, no two rectums are alike.”

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard at a design meeting before. Doesn’t it just fill your mind with all sorts of goofy images of tech guys dropping their pants and ponying up to the wall to have their rectums scanned to get into their server room?

AND, I have been told that rectal scanners make an appearance in the Dreamworks movie "Monsters vs. Aliens", so my electrical friend must not have been the first to slip up this way...

So now, forever, I will always snicker to myself when a client requests information for biometric security devices.