The digirati are in a fury today over claims by an outfit called i-mature which claims to have solved the problem of age verification with a $25 device that checks a finger's bone density to determine just how old you are.

The image, by the way, is from Vanderbilt University, which has no affiliation with either Corante, i-Mature, or this blog. It describes x-rays of a finger taken at different power settings. Go Commodores.

RSA announced "a joint research collaboration" with the company. But there is skepticism over exactly how precisely a bone scan can measure age, and the more people investigate, the more questions they raise.

1. If anyone out there knows anything about the company's team -- good, bad or indifferent -- I'd love to hear from them.
2. Who is Yoav Stern? He's listed as the company's "medical consultant," but he doesn't exist on Google.
3. No information on the technology is available to the general public. A polite inquiry for the password was met by an e-mail reading, "we won't give it to you until we meet with you."
4. David Burt, PR manager for Secure Computing, doesn't believe there's a market here and adds "just looking at the device pictured on the I-Mature website it’s hard to see how it could be retailed for just $25.
5. The i-Mature PR machine is throwing a lot of names around, most especially that of the Congressional Internet Caucus. We're waiting to hear back from 'em. Now, some things are true. Israeli companies appear every day with great, ground-breaking technology. They are often run by people Americans have never heard of before. There is a real problem with age verification going both ways (kids pretending to be adults to score porn, adults pretending to be kids for abusive purposes).

   But this smells. Someone might be running a scam on the Administration's fears of crime and its naive faith in technology.

   Or we could have a real breakthrough on our hands.

   I'll work on finding out more.