Identity Management and biometrics have been around longer than you think, but technologists and GovCon execs say the multimodalities in its future could be even more promising than its illustrious past.

Students of biometrics often turn to the pages of science fiction to explain the rise of such technology as fingerprint scanners, face recognition software and radio-frequency embedded “smart” cards.

But, perhaps, they would be wiser to turn to the history books.

Biometric identity measures and the digital-age conundrum of proving who you say you are seems like a very 21st-century concern. But, researchers have dated the use of biometrics — the search for a definite way to identify a person using physical characteristics — to a 31,000-year-old cave. The evidence: a series of hand prints on the cave wall distinguishing a group of primitive artists’ work.

You could say biometrics has been hiding in plain sight for much of human history. But, if current trends continue, including the recent merging of biological identifiers with the cybersecurity practice of Identity Management, it likely won’t slip under the radar much longer.

And, as biometric technologies evolve to approach what experts call multimodality — the many modes of identification — it could be an untapped market for those companies supplying security and assurance solutions to the federal government.

Identity Management — or, IdM as it’s known — is often a term tied to the practice of logging on or granting access to computer networks and server rooms.

But, as the technology has evolved, IdM has moved out of the realm of just numbers, codes, passwords and digital certificates. The concept of managing identities is now firmly intertwined with the science of biometrics, the collection of stored physical data — everything from fingerprint and iris scans to face and voice recognition, known collectively as multimodality.

Multimodal biometric recognition is looking more and more like a vision from science fiction but one increasingly supported by the security goals of the federal government.

“Given recent legislation and regulations,” said Rocky Thurston, vice president and general manager for Wyle Information Systems’ civilian programs, “enterprises must implement comprehensive security measures, and Identity Management” — often merged with biometrics — “is one such measure.”

As the various technologies have multiplied, so have GovCon firms’ offerings for the federal government’s homeland security, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Northrop Grumman Information Systems’ Chief Technology Officer and Vice President for Advanced Technology Bob Brammer knows biometrics. As a large systems integrator for the federal government, Northrop Grumman has provided multimodal biometric systems for the Defense Department that have been used on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Another up-and-coming market for biometrics and IdM in the federal space is the proliferation of Personal Identity Verification card systems, which grant access to government facilities and networks, said Roy Stephan, vice president of technology solutions at Intelligent Decisions in Ashburn, Va.

Meanwhile, Falls Church, Va.-based firm USIS provides a robust biometrics offering, serving as one of the go-to contractors for fingerprinting and background checks in the federal government.

As an expert in this traditional area of biometrics, though, the firm’s President of Investigation Services Christopher Tillery said he has already seen a merging between the once-discrete concepts of biometrics and IdM.

“It is already happening in the area of credentialing in the private sector,” he said, “and we are seeing a limited number of federal agencies making the transition to additional biometric technologies, such as iris and facial scans.”

Even as the technologies intersect, experts agree there are important distinctions to make. Biometrics is not, by pure definition, so much an Identity Management system as an identification system, Brammer said.

Identity Management systems operate as the guards at the castle gate. “Halt, who goes there?” is answered by a password and, perhaps, a card or ID badge.

“You have an individual who has been identified … and you’re using an Identity Management system to verify this person is who he says he is,” Brammer continued, “and has
the privileges granted to have access to some system.”

Contrast this with an identification system where “the primary objective is asking more broadly, ‘Who is this person,’” and using a broad database of identifying information to pinpoint a match, he added.

So, where are IdM and biometrics merging, then? The answer lies in the search for more efficient access systems, exemplified by “single sign-on,” where users authenticate themselves once, then gain access to the whole network.

Many IdM systems now employ what is called a two-factor system, Brammer explained. Users authenticate themselves with an ID card or badge along with a PIN number or code. It’s a combination of “what you have” and “what you know,” he said.

But, some security analysts worry that two factors are simply not enough for secure access, and some systems now employ a third factor — a biometric identifier.

“In addition to what you have and what you know,” Brammer added, “the other factor would be what you are: like a fingerprint, or a face or an iris — a biometric that would be part of the overall Identity Management system.”

The coupling of biometrics with IdM systems is not necessarily a recent development.

Keith Rhodes, chief technology officer of QinetiQ North America’s Mission Solutions Group in McLean, Va., said there has always been some hint of biometrics, or physical characteristic, associated with our identities, whether it is a signature, a photo or our fingerprints.

In fact, a special subcommittee of the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the science and technology arm of the Commerce Department, identifies biometrics as a particular subset of IdM.

One of NIST’s next big projects — the creation of a secure online identity ecosystem — has piqued the interest of government contractors providing IdM and biometric solutions.

The proposed system would provide higher levels of authentication for Internet users and organizations, as well as the Web’s underlying architecture.

“A coordinated national strategy to significantly improve online trust will put e-commerce on stronger footing,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in January, when the department first laid out the plans.

The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace might also hamper identity theft, because less personal information would be collected and stored in a single database.

But Locke also sought to assuage the fears of privacy advocates who heard Orwellian undertones in the plan’s promises of secure authentication.

“What we are talking about,” he said, “is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities,” not the creation of an online national ID card monitoring Web use, he added.

QinetiQ CTO Rhodes said the often unfounded “Big Brother” fears have increased as the technology has become more complex, and that trajectory will probably continue.

“As the identity process becomes more invasive, as it would for an iris scan, people will become more resistive to it,” he said. “And, if that is glossed over, the introduction of new identity factors will fail.”

Then, there are the legal challenges to using biometrics, which Rhodes said may pose an even bigger headache for security firms and government agencies.

“All the great technology in the world will not convince a lawyer that the technology can be used,” he said. “Likewise, all the legal authority in the world will not make people feel that the world is not some Orwellian nightmare.”

Putting aside the feverish notions of conspiracy theorists, it’s really more an issue of the technology catching up to designers’ visions, with a lot of mechanical and technical kinks still to work out.

In fact, Northrop Grumman’s Brammer said the hurdles to more widespread acceptance are often surprisingly mundane.

“A lot of people don’t like to be bothered remembering their password,” he said, “so they’re not wild about one-factor systems, much less two- or three-factor systems.”

However, along with the technical and mechanical issues, Brammer said there are also “definite security issues.”

For one, as the systems become more complex, collecting more points of data, the possibility this very personal information could be exploited heightens as well.

“As identity becomes more and more complicated in order to maintain uniqueness [and] the security requirements become more and more stringent and complex …
a security breach has ever-increasing consequences,”
Rhodes said.

And, with databases brimming over with stored biometric identifiers, the threat of identity theft takes on a new,
chilling level.

If a credit card is stolen, the risk is fairly low, Brammer said. Canceling a card is simple, and victims of traditional identity theft are often able to recoup their losses.

“Then, you get another credit card and get on with your life,” he said. “On the other hand … if a biometric database is compromised and somebody steals your fingerprints or corrupts that data somehow, it’s very difficult for you to get a new set of fingers.”

For this and a whole host of other technological reasons, biometrics and IdM remain to be more widely adopted. In fact, Wyle’s Thurston predicted that, aside from recent gains in the federal sector, biometric solutions are still two to five years from “breaking into the mainstream market.”

Even as the future of IdM and biometrics remains unwritten or, perhaps, like the handprints in the primeval cave — undiscovered — some things are clear.

“The days of trusting traditional identification sources such as a paper Social Security card are clearly numbered,” said USIS’ investigations guru Tillery.

As for the privacy concerns, Brammer said as the public learns more, the unfounded fears of spying will go by the wayside. “We’re very well aware of some of the concerns about privacy and ‘Big Brother’ and so forth,” he said. “However, the risks associated with not identifying people properly, in my view, are a bigger problem.”

It may only be a matter of time, Rhodes suggested, before biometrics will be fully ensconced in the IdM spectrum and become, simply, a way of life.

“As additional biometric verifiers become more pervasive and reliable … they will be considered ‘acceptable forms of ID’ and they will then be considered a necessary form of ID,” he explained.

And, as the multimodality of biometrics becomes even more “multi,” the future is just as limitless, up to a point.

“From a technical standpoint,” Rhodes said, “there is no end to the evolution of Identity Management.”

As far as what will be implemented and what will remain only in the realm of science fiction, Rhodes said he relies on a simple axiom: “If it is really important, someone will pay for it.”Students of biometrics often turn to the pages of science fiction to explain the rise of such technology as fingerprint scanners, face recognition software and radio-frequency embedded “smart” cards.

But, perhaps, they would be wiser to turn to the history books.

Biometric identity measures and the digital-age conundrum of proving who you say you are seems like a very 21st-century concern. But, researchers have dated the use of biometrics — the search for a definite way to identify a person using physical characteristics — to a 31,000-year-old cave. The evidence: a series of hand prints on the cave wall distinguishing a group of primitive artists’ work.

You could say biometrics has been hiding in plain sight for much of human history. But, if current trends continue, including the recent merging of biological identifiers with the cybersecurity practice of Identity Management, it likely won’t slip under the radar much longer.

And, as biometric technologies evolve to approach what experts call multimodality — the many modes of identification — it could be an untapped market for those companies supplying security and assurance solutions to the federal government.

Identity Management — or, IdM as it’s known — is often a term tied to the practice of logging on or granting access to computer networks and server rooms.

But, as the technology has evolved, IdM has moved out of the realm of just numbers, codes, passwords and digital certificates. The concept of managing identities is now firmly intertwined with the science of biometrics, the collection of stored physical data — everything from fingerprint and iris scans to face and voice recognition, known collectively as multimodality.

Multimodal biometric recognition is looking more and more like a vision from science fiction but one increasingly supported by the security goals of the federal government.

“Given recent legislation and regulations,” said Rocky Thurston, vice president and general manager for Wyle Information Systems’ civilian programs, “enterprises must implement comprehensive security measures, and Identity Management” — often merged with biometrics — “is one such measure.”

As the various technologies have multiplied, so have GovCon firms’ offerings for the federal government’s homeland security, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Northrop Grumman Information Systems’ Chief Technology Officer and Vice President for Advanced Technology Bob Brammer knows biometrics. As a large systems integrator for the federal government, Northrop Grumman has provided multimodal biometric systems for the Defense Department that have been used on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Another up-and-coming market for biometrics and IdM in the federal space is the proliferation of Personal Identity Verification card systems, which grant access to government facilities and networks, said Roy Stephan, vice president of technology solutions at Intelligent Decisions in Ashburn, Va.

Meanwhile, Falls Church, Va.-based firm USIS provides a robust biometrics offering, serving as one of the go-to contractors for fingerprinting and background checks in the federal government.

As an expert in this traditional area of biometrics, though, the firm’s President of Investigation Services Christopher Tillery said he has already seen a merging between the once-discrete concepts of biometrics and IdM.

“It is already happening in the area of credentialing in the private sector,” he said, “and we are seeing a limited number of federal agencies making the transition to additional biometric technologies, such as iris and facial scans.”

Even as the technologies intersect, experts agree there are important distinctions to make. Biometrics is not, by pure definition, so much an Identity Management system as an identification system, Brammer said.

Identity Management systems operate as the guards at the castle gate. “Halt, who goes there?” is answered by a password and, perhaps, a card or ID badge.

“You have an individual who has been identified … and you’re using an Identity Management system to verify this person is who he says he is,” Brammer continued, “and has
the privileges granted to have access to some system.”

Contrast this with an identification system where “the primary objective is asking more broadly, ‘Who is this person,’” and using a broad database of identifying information to pinpoint a match, he added.

So, where are IdM and biometrics merging, then? The answer lies in the search for more efficient access systems, exemplified by “single sign-on,” where users authenticate themselves once, then gain access to the whole network.

Many IdM systems now employ what is called a two-factor system, Brammer explained. Users authenticate themselves with an ID card or badge along with a PIN number or code. It’s a combination of “what you have” and “what you know,” he said.

But, some security analysts worry that two factors are simply not enough for secure access, and some systems now employ a third factor — a biometric identifier.

“In addition to what you have and what you know,” Brammer added, “the other factor would be what you are: like a fingerprint, or a face or an iris — a biometric that would be part of the overall Identity Management system.”

The coupling of biometrics with IdM systems is not necessarily a recent development.

Keith Rhodes, chief technology officer of QinetiQ North America’s Mission Solutions Group in McLean, Va., said there has always been some hint of biometrics, or physical characteristic, associated with our identities, whether it is a signature, a photo or our fingerprints.

In fact, a special subcommittee of the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the science and technology arm of the Commerce Department, identifies biometrics as a particular subset of IdM.

One of NIST’s next big projects — the creation of a secure online identity ecosystem — has piqued the interest of government contractors providing IdM and biometric solutions.

The proposed system would provide higher levels of authentication for Internet users and organizations, as well as the Web’s underlying architecture.

“A coordinated national strategy to significantly improve online trust will put e-commerce on stronger footing,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in January, when the department first laid out the plans.

The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace might also hamper identity theft, because less personal information would be collected and stored in a single database.

But Locke also sought to assuage the fears of privacy advocates who heard Orwellian undertones in the plan’s promises of secure authentication.

“What we are talking about,” he said, “is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities,” not the creation of an online national ID card monitoring Web use, he added.

QinetiQ CTO Rhodes said the often unfounded “Big Brother” fears have increased as the technology has become more complex, and that trajectory will probably continue.

“As the identity process becomes more invasive, as it would for an iris scan, people will become more resistive to it,” he said. “And, if that is glossed over, the introduction of new identity factors will fail.”

Then, there are the legal challenges to using biometrics, which Rhodes said may pose an even bigger headache for security firms and government agencies.

“All the great technology in the world will not convince a lawyer that the technology can be used,” he said. “Likewise, all the legal authority in the world will not make people feel that the world is not some Orwellian nightmare.”

Putting aside the feverish notions of conspiracy theorists, it’s really more an issue of the technology catching up to designers’ visions, with a lot of mechanical and technical kinks still to work out.

In fact, Northrop Grumman’s Brammer said the hurdles to more widespread acceptance are often surprisingly mundane.

“A lot of people don’t like to be bothered remembering their password,” he said, “so they’re not wild about one-factor systems, much less two- or three-factor systems.”

However, along with the technical and mechanical issues, Brammer said there are also “definite security issues.”

For one, as the systems become more complex, collecting more points of data, the possibility this very personal information could be exploited heightens as well.

“As identity becomes more and more complicated in order to maintain uniqueness [and] the security requirements become more and more stringent and complex …
a security breach has ever-increasing consequences,”
Rhodes said.

And, with databases brimming over with stored biometric identifiers, the threat of identity theft takes on a new,
chilling level.

If a credit card is stolen, the risk is fairly low, Brammer said. Canceling a card is simple, and victims of traditional identity theft are often able to recoup their losses.

“Then, you get another credit card and get on with your life,” he said. “On the other hand … if a biometric database is compromised and somebody steals your fingerprints or corrupts that data somehow, it’s very difficult for you to get a new set of fingers.”

For this and a whole host of other technological reasons, biometrics and IdM remain to be more widely adopted. In fact, Wyle’s Thurston predicted that, aside from recent gains in the federal sector, biometric solutions are still two to five years from “breaking into the mainstream market.”

Even as the future of IdM and biometrics remains unwritten or, perhaps, like the handprints in the primeval cave — undiscovered — some things are clear.

“The days of trusting traditional identification sources such as a paper Social Security card are clearly numbered,” said USIS’ investigations guru Tillery.

As for the privacy concerns, Brammer said as the public learns more, the unfounded fears of spying will go by the wayside. “We’re very well aware of some of the concerns about privacy and ‘Big Brother’ and so forth,” he said. “However, the risks associated with not identifying people properly, in my view, are a bigger problem.”

It may only be a matter of time, Rhodes suggested, before biometrics will be fully ensconced in the IdM spectrum and become, simply, a way of life.

“As additional biometric verifiers become more pervasive and reliable … they will be considered ‘acceptable forms of ID’ and they will then be considered a necessary form of ID,” he explained.

And, as the multimodality of biometrics becomes even more “multi,” the future is just as limitless, up to a point.

“From a technical standpoint,” Rhodes said, “there is no end to the evolution of Identity Management.”

As far as what will be implemented and what will remain only in the realm of science fiction, Rhodes said he relies on a simple axiom: “If it is really important, someone will pay for it.”Students of biometrics often turn to the pages of science fiction to explain the rise of such technology as fingerprint scanners, face recognition software and radio-frequency embedded “smart” cards.

But, perhaps, they would be wiser to turn to the history books.

Biometric identity measures and the digital-age conundrum of proving who you say you are seems like a very 21st-century concern. But, researchers have dated the use of biometrics — the search for a definite way to identify a person using physical characteristics — to a 31,000-year-old cave. The evidence: a series of hand prints on the cave wall distinguishing a group of primitive artists’ work.

You could say biometrics has been hiding in plain sight for much of human history. But, if current trends continue, including the recent merging of biological identifiers with the cybersecurity practice of Identity Management, it likely won’t slip under the radar much longer.

And, as biometric technologies evolve to approach what experts call multimodality — the many modes of identification — it could be an untapped market for those companies supplying security and assurance solutions to the federal government.

Identity Management — or, IdM as it’s known — is often a term tied to the practice of logging on or granting access to computer networks and server rooms.

But, as the technology has evolved, IdM has moved out of the realm of just numbers, codes, passwords and digital certificates. The concept of managing identities is now firmly intertwined with the science of biometrics, the collection of stored physical data — everything from fingerprint and iris scans to face and voice recognition, known collectively as multimodality.

Multimodal biometric recognition is looking more and more like a vision from science fiction but one increasingly supported by the security goals of the federal government.

“Given recent legislation and regulations,” said Rocky Thurston, vice president and general manager for Wyle Information Systems’ civilian programs, “enterprises must implement comprehensive security measures, and Identity Management” — often merged with biometrics — “is one such measure.”

As the various technologies have multiplied, so have GovCon firms’ offerings for the federal government’s homeland security, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Northrop Grumman Information Systems’ Chief Technology Officer and Vice President for Advanced Technology Bob Brammer knows biometrics. As a large systems integrator for the federal government, Northrop Grumman has provided multimodal biometric systems for the Defense Department that have been used on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Another up-and-coming market for biometrics and IdM in the federal space is the proliferation of Personal Identity Verification card systems, which grant access to government facilities and networks, said Roy Stephan, vice president of technology solutions at Intelligent Decisions in Ashburn, Va.

Meanwhile, Falls Church, Va.-based firm USIS provides a robust biometrics offering, serving as one of the go-to contractors for fingerprinting and background checks in the federal government.

As an expert in this traditional area of biometrics, though, the firm’s President of Investigation Services Christopher Tillery said he has already seen a merging between the once-discrete concepts of biometrics and IdM.

“It is already happening in the area of credentialing in the private sector,” he said, “and we are seeing a limited number of federal agencies making the transition to additional biometric technologies, such as iris and facial scans.”

Even as the technologies intersect, experts agree there are important distinctions to make. Biometrics is not, by pure definition, so much an Identity Management system as an identification system, Brammer said.

Identity Management systems operate as the guards at the castle gate. “Halt, who goes there?” is answered by a password and, perhaps, a card or ID badge.

“You have an individual who has been identified … and you’re using an Identity Management system to verify this person is who he says he is,” Brammer continued, “and has
the privileges granted to have access to some system.”

Contrast this with an identification system where “the primary objective is asking more broadly, ‘Who is this person,’” and using a broad database of identifying information to pinpoint a match, he added.

So, where are IdM and biometrics merging, then? The answer lies in the search for more efficient access systems, exemplified by “single sign-on,” where users authenticate themselves once, then gain access to the whole network.

Many IdM systems now employ what is called a two-factor system, Brammer explained. Users authenticate themselves with an ID card or badge along with a PIN number or code. It’s a combination of “what you have” and “what you know,” he said.

But, some security analysts worry that two factors are simply not enough for secure access, and some systems now employ a third factor — a biometric identifier.

“In addition to what you have and what you know,” Brammer added, “the other factor would be what you are: like a fingerprint, or a face or an iris — a biometric that would be part of the overall Identity Management system.”

The coupling of biometrics with IdM systems is not necessarily a recent development.

Keith Rhodes, chief technology officer of QinetiQ North America’s Mission Solutions Group in McLean, Va., said there has always been some hint of biometrics, or physical characteristic, associated with our identities, whether it is a signature, a photo or our fingerprints.

In fact, a special subcommittee of the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the science and technology arm of the Commerce Department, identifies biometrics as a particular subset of IdM.

One of NIST’s next big projects — the creation of a secure online identity ecosystem — has piqued the interest of government contractors providing IdM and biometric solutions.

The proposed system would provide higher levels of authentication for Internet users and organizations, as well as the Web’s underlying architecture.

“A coordinated national strategy to significantly improve online trust will put e-commerce on stronger footing,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in January, when the department first laid out the plans.

The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace might also hamper identity theft, because less personal information would be collected and stored in a single database.

But Locke also sought to assuage the fears of privacy advocates who heard Orwellian undertones in the plan’s promises of secure authentication.

“What we are talking about,” he said, “is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities,” not the creation of an online national ID card monitoring Web use, he added.

QinetiQ CTO Rhodes said the often unfounded “Big Brother” fears have increased as the technology has become more complex, and that trajectory will probably continue.

“As the identity process becomes more invasive, as it would for an iris scan, people will become more resistive to it,” he said. “And, if that is glossed over, the introduction of new identity factors will fail.”

Then, there are the legal challenges to using biometrics, which Rhodes said may pose an even bigger headache for security firms and government agencies.

“All the great technology in the world will not convince a lawyer that the technology can be used,” he said. “Likewise, all the legal authority in the world will not make people feel that the world is not some Orwellian nightmare.”

Putting aside the feverish notions of conspiracy theorists, it’s really more an issue of the technology catching up to designers’ visions, with a lot of mechanical and technical kinks still to work out.

In fact, Northrop Grumman’s Brammer said the hurdles to more widespread acceptance are often surprisingly mundane.

“A lot of people don’t like to be bothered remembering their password,” he said, “so they’re not wild about one-factor systems, much less two- or three-factor systems.”

However, along with the technical and mechanical issues, Brammer said there are also “definite security issues.”

For one, as the systems become more complex, collecting more points of data, the possibility this very personal information could be exploited heightens as well.

“As identity becomes more and more complicated in order to maintain uniqueness [and] the security requirements become more and more stringent and complex …
a security breach has ever-increasing consequences,”
Rhodes said.

And, with databases brimming over with stored biometric identifiers, the threat of identity theft takes on a new,
chilling level.

If a credit card is stolen, the risk is fairly low, Brammer said. Canceling a card is simple, and victims of traditional identity theft are often able to recoup their losses.

“Then, you get another credit card and get on with your life,” he said. “On the other hand … if a biometric database is compromised and somebody steals your fingerprints or corrupts that data somehow, it’s very difficult for you to get a new set of fingers.”

For this and a whole host of other technological reasons, biometrics and IdM remain to be more widely adopted. In fact, Wyle’s Thurston predicted that, aside from recent gains in the federal sector, biometric solutions are still two to five years from “breaking into the mainstream market.”

Even as the future of IdM and biometrics remains unwritten or, perhaps, like the handprints in the primeval cave — undiscovered — some things are clear.

“The days of trusting traditional identification sources such as a paper Social Security card are clearly numbered,” said USIS’ investigations guru Tillery.

As for the privacy concerns, Brammer said as the public learns more, the unfounded fears of spying will go by the wayside. “We’re very well aware of some of the concerns about privacy and ‘Big Brother’ and so forth,” he said. “However, the risks associated with not identifying people properly, in my view, are a bigger problem.”

It may only be a matter of time, Rhodes suggested, before biometrics will be fully ensconced in the IdM spectrum and become, simply, a way of life.

“As additional biometric verifiers become more pervasive and reliable … they will be considered ‘acceptable forms of ID’ and they will then be considered a necessary form of ID,” he explained.

And, as the multimodality of biometrics becomes even more “multi,” the future is just as limitless, up to a point.

“From a technical standpoint,” Rhodes said, “there is no end to the evolution of Identity Management.”

As far as what will be implemented and what will remain only in the realm of science fiction, Rhodes said he relies on a simple axiom: “If it is really important, someone will pay for it.” ♦