It's All Over, Jason Bourne

Potentially lethal threat to a movie genre!

To Catch a Spy

In the age of iris scans and facial recognition software, biometrics experts like to point out: The eyes don’t lie. And that has made tradecraft all the more difficult for U.S. spies.

After billions of dollars of investment — largely by the U.S. government — the routine collection and analysis of fingerprints, iris scans, and facial images are helping to ferret out terrorists and immigration fraudsters all over the world. But it has also made it harder for undercover agents to remain anonymous.

Gone are the days of entering a country with a false passport and wearing a wig and a mustache to hide your true identity. Once an iris scan is on record, it becomes nearly impossible to evade detection...

At the CIA, the concerns have prompted a new era of cyber-espionage to compensate for the emerging limits on clandestine operations.

 “Our ability to carry out our responsibilities for human intelligence and national security responsibilities has become more challenging,” CIA Director John Brennan said in March in announcing a major internal reorganization of the agency. It includes the creation of the Directorate of Digital Innovation, and in a memo to staff, Brennan called on the CIA to “embrace and leverage the digital revolution.”... 

As DNA and other biometric collection and analysis become more routine and more sophisticated, officials and experts said it is only going to become more dangerous for spies to operate. 

“There is no simple solution to this,” Flynn said, “so we’re going to have to be far more creative than, I think, what we’re looking at right now.”