Fake ID's are a common tool for terrorists. False passports, driver’s licenses and credit cards are used to rent cars, buy explosives, cross borders and board airplanes. Now, there's a hi-tech solution that could all but eliminate false documents. NBC's Kevin Corke reports.

In the recent Tom Cruise thriller, “Minority Report,” iris recognition is the standard method of personal identification. It was a possible glimpse of life 50 years in the future, a time when your eye is your ID.

That vision of the future is here now, with eye-opening technology that's changing the way America thinks about security."

Fitzsimmons is president of Iridian Technologies. General Electric, parent company of NBC News, is part owner of Iridian. Fitzsimmons says iris recognition begins with a picture of your eye.

“We then encode that picture into a database whereby when you're going thru the airport, you can look into an iris camera,” says Fitzsimmons, “In about three seconds, it will recognize you and let you pass through very quickly, accurately, securely.”

Now in trial use at businesses, ATM's and at 30 airports around the world, iris recognition can be combined with fingerprinting, providing foolproof, computerized identification.

“We have 240 points to work with in a picture of your eye,” says Fitzsimmons. “Fingerprint has 70 points to work with.”

That is critical, because many of the 9/11 hijackers used phony documents to move around the country in the months before that fateful morning. Developers believe getting multiple ID's will be much tougher with the new technology because your iris data will be on file.

“And so when you come to enroll, you're checked against all the other enrollments in that database,” says Fitzsimmons. “One million, 10 million, 50 million, to make sure you didn't enroll twice.”

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Lawmakers argue that if iris recognition is available and can make us safer, it should be used in creating the most basic form of ID there is: the driver's license. It is among the most-often falsified ID because there are 50 states and 50 different looks.

“I think we need to tell the states in no uncertain terms that each one of them has to conform their drivers license or ID system to this biometric technology,” says Rep. Bob Andrews, D-N.J.

But privacy advocates say this technology has the potential for widespread misuse.

“Where you work, perhaps what your medical conditions might be, what your government benefits are,” says Mark Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “All of that data becomes accessible to a single card. I think it's the sense that government would know so many different aspects of our private life that raises a serious concern.”

“I will take a backseat to no one in protecting civil liberties,” says Andrews, “but there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in concealing your identity.“

How long until this technology covers every border, and every flight?

“I would be disappointed if within five years, this technology or something else like it is not in every sensitive location in America,” says Andrews.

It’s a glimpse of the future, making America safer, with cautious eyes on the past.

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