Biometrics can play a significant role in facilitating faster and more secure travel while protecting borders, according to survey respondents from Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, and 89 percent of the citizens surveyed say they are willing share their biometric details when traveling across international borders. However, 69 percent of the 3,000 respondents say they have not shared any biometric data to date.

If proposals in the French Senate come to fruition, the country could become one of the first in the world to make sweeping laws against the use of biometric technology, excepting certain stringent security-based cases.

Facebook, Wal-Mart and other companies planning to use facial-recognition scans for security or tailored sales pitches are working to build the rules for how images and online profiles can be used, according to Newsday. The U.S. Department of Commerce will start meeting with industry and privacy advocates in February to draft a voluntary code of conduct for using facial recognition products, and the draft will be ready by June.

Facial biometric recognition works well on clear images with a good view of the face, but much additional data is often discarded due to the fact that the face, or the full face, is not clearly visible. The discarded data contains “soft” biometrics, such as height, gait and other features, such as ears.

Perdue University researchers are working on technology that could enable users to replace passwords with iris or fingerprint scans, The Associated Press reports.

The researchers are testing emerging biometric technologies for weaknesses in the basement lab of Perdue University’s International Center for Biometrics Research. Iris and fingerprint scans, as well as facial and voice recognition, are just a few of the tools that could eliminate the need to frequently change passwords.

Users of iris biometrics would not need to re-scan eyes for up to nine years, the NIST research suggests, as age doesn't affect eyes as quickly as previously thought.