For countries with national ID programs, this Orwellian scenario is already starting to play out. In collaboration with MorphoTrust, India has already iris-printed 350 million of its citizens as part of its national ID program, and they're on track to scan all 1.2 billion. This year, Mexico will roll out the first iris-matched ID cards in the world as part of a $25 million program. In both cases, the ID will help stop fraud and provide poverty assistance, helping solve half a dozen urgent humanitarian issues at once. Despite these good intentions, this kind of mass identification has civil libertarians very worried.

"The concern is that biometrics will be used for the mass tracking of individuals," according to Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If that kind of ID system becomes routine and widespread, it turns us into a kind of checkpoint society." Even in India, the system is still only used at police stations and government offices, but once the print is connected to a universal ID, it's easy to imagine iris scans becoming as commonplace as pulling out a driver's license.

Judging by the technology itself, we may be just a few technical breakthroughs away from Minority Report-style eye-flashers. Right now, most iris capturing happens close up because the cameras need flashes of infrared light to illuminate the eye. Too strong a flash will damage the retina, so the devices rely on weaker flashes from closer in. But aside from the flash issues, AOptix says the same technology can work from as far as 60 feet away. The only reason the feature isn’t available is that AOptix saw more money in TSA-style checkpoints. "We didn't see a compelling market for the long-range iris tech," Pritikin says. "It's essentially surveillance, CCTV but for iris, and there's a limited market for that." It's good news, but small comfort. If an oppressive regime wanted to pick up the technology and run with it, it would be hard to stop them.

For now, we're left with less invasive devices like the Stratus, an iris camera aimed squarely at US law enforcement. The FBI is already building an iris system to track persons of interest, and it's not hard to see them using a Stratus-like device to collect prints. Iris cameras haven't landed in the hands of beat cops yet, but AOptix is trying its best to get them there. The path of the technology, from the military to local law enforcement, is almost complete. The only question is what it will look like when it gets here.