On September 11, hundreds of firefighters responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center. The volunteer firefighters at the West Hamilton Beach Fire Department in West Hamilton Beach, Queens, New York, were no different. Many off-duty firefighters went straight to the site to respond in any way they could, but as they rushed off to help there was no way of knowing who was on the scene and who wasn't. As "Tech Live" reports tonight, that sort of confusion could be a thing of the past.

"As a volunteer fire station we don't require you to do much more than sign in and out when you go," West Hamilton Beach firefighter Robert Leonard explained. "On September 11, when 18 people ran through this firehouse on the way to the Trade Center, they didn't all take the time to sign in, so we realized there was an accountability problem."

The answer? The firehouse teamed up with Sense Holdings to test a pilot program that uses biometrics to keep track of the firefighters. Rather than signing in and out in a logbook, the men and women of the West Hamilton Beach Fire Department now simply place their finger on a pad, using their fingerprint to sign in and out.

Chief John Velotti says the men and women love it, and it has helped with accountability.

"If we need to go to a certain day to see who was here, ...we don't have to go paging through books like with the old system. Here you just punch the date in the computer and you know who was here," he said. "It works great."

According to Leonard, the goal is to make this technology portable so they can keep tabs on firefighters on the scene.

Biometrics makes an impression

Biometric technology has become increasingly important since September 11. While not new, the idea of biometrics has been pushed to the forefront since last year's attacks. Biometrics offers accountability on the job. It also increases security by using unique, personal identifiers such as your fingerprints, hand, or iris.

At the Office of the Legislative Counsel in the House of Representatives, workers now need more than a password to log onto their machines. They also use iris-scanning technology.

At San Francisco International Airport, workers have been using hand scanners since 1992. Now they'll also encounter a LiveScan fingerprint machine at least once during their employment at SFO.

"Following 9/11 we had new security requirements to do more background checks on more employees," airport spokesman Mike McCarron told TechTV.

That meant fingerprinting all new airport employees and rechecking current employees. "It became apparent that using the old ink cards was going to create a huge backlog," McCarron said. "We'd been looking at going to [LiveScan] previous to that anyway. We bought one right after the terrorist attacks to start the process. [We] got a second one a few months later."

The prints are sent electronically to the FBI and to databases that are searched for criminal records. Results now come back in as little as three days to two weeks. The process used to take between six and eight weeks.

McCarron says the airport is happy with the results. He was being rechecked the day TechTV visited and noted that the whole process is "a lot easier, a lot cleaner, and a lot quicker"; no more messy ink-stained hands.

Not just for public offices anymore

Biometrics is also catching on in the private sector.

"We refer to 2001 as a breakout year for biometrics," said Rick Norton of the International Biometric Industry Association (IBIA). "Prior to 9/11 the devices were low in cost by comparison, robust as far as performance, but the market still wasn't opened up. After September 11 there was a huge spike in interest."

Although 6 percent of American businesses now employ some form of biometrics, initial growth is expected in the public sector. Following the attacks, Congress passed legislation mandating the use of biometrics for key applications. It also asked private companies to look at how biometrics may be useful in protecting their data and privacy.

"The private sector has taken a clue from what happened and realized they're just as vulnerable as the government is," Norton said. "They're very cognizant of why they need to improve their systems and there are several drivers for that -- not just an awareness, but actual legislation that asks them to take a closer look at biometrics in terms of protecting privacy, protecting data, and certainly securing facilities."

The IBIA expects the industry to grow from $200 million today to $2 billion in 2006.