Of all the dramatic images to emerge in the hours and days following the September 11 attacks, one of the most haunting was a frame from a surveillance-camera video capturing the face of suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta as he passed through an airport metal detector in Portland, ME. Even more chilling to many security experts is the fact that, had the right technology been in place, an image like that might have helped avert the attacks. According to experts, face recognition technology that's already commercially available could have instantly checked the image against photos of suspected terrorists on file with the FBI and other authorities. If a match had been made, the system could have sounded the alarm before the suspect boarded his flight.

In the wake of the attacks, a number of companies, security professionals and government officials have proposed using biometrics-identification based on a person's unique physical characteristics-to enhance airport security. "We've developed some fantastic technologies, but we just haven't deployed them," says Georgia State University aviation safety researcher Rick Charles. Readily available biometric techniques include digital fingerprinting, iris scanning, voice recognition and face recognition.