Technology immediately identifies the 'bad guys'.

• Author: Beidel, Eric
• Position: TECHWIRE

It's a simple scanner than can keep beer away from minors and terrorists off planes.

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The same device that can catch a teenager's fake ID could have kept the man who tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square from boarding the plane on which he nearly escaped in May.

Defense ID is a hand-held scanner that reads magnetic strips, barcodes and special text on most forms of identification, including driver's licenses, passports and military IDs. The system immediately compares the data to 160 "bad guy" databases, including the no-fly list that Faisal Shahzad's name had been on when he got through all levels of security at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.

About 80 secure federal locations, mostly military bases, already use Defense ID. It recently caught a group of gang members posing as movers trying to sneak onto Quantico Marine Corps Base, Va., said Nelson Ludlow, CEO of Intellicheck Mobilisa Inc., which manufactures Defense ID in Port Townsend, Wash.

The scanner is attracting the attention of retailers who can use it to enter customer information into credit card applications on the spot. However, the future of Defense...