A little help here?

I read this article linked from Drudge the other day with interest. The gist is that there is a nationwide effort to scan in the irisis of children across the nation in order to assist in identifying missing children. There are some nifty quotes like:

The system can scan an eye and match an iris in 3 to 5 seconds after comparing it with stored images in a national database, Mullin said.

And further:

The system can scan an eye and match an iris in 3 to 5 seconds after comparing it with stored images in a national database, Mullin said.

Mullin and Galveston County Sheriff Gean Leonard appeared together at a news conference at the Galveston County Justice Center to explain how the technology will assist in identifying missing children.

Wow, 3 to 5 seconds, that's great! But, how often is a missing child or elderly person found, alive, and authorities are completely unable to identify the individual? If the child is unfortunately found dead, can a retina scan still be used? Call me cold hearted, but it seems like an awfully large expense ($35,000 x 1,800 sheriff's departments = $63 million, not accounting for upkeep of the database and equipment as well as the personnel to run it all) for what may ultimately be a rather small problem that people are trying to solve with a potentially large invasion of privacy. Of course they do address these concerns at the end of the article:

Leonard acknowledged that some parents might see the iris scans as an invasion of privacy but said he is certain doubters could be won over.

O'Reilly said the CHILD Project overcame privacy objections by programming the database to remove an iris scan automatically once a child turns 18, unless he or she is still listed as missing.

He also said that only enough information to find the parents, or the family in the case of an elderly person, would be entered. Personal information, such as Social Security numbers, would not be used, he said.

Sorry, the idea still skeeves me out. Retention rules can always change, and often do without the consumer knowing (HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley not withstanding). I suppose it could have value in extreme situations such as the chaos surrounding Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami disaster, but in my fairly disaster free corner of the US, I think I will take my chances.