9523759 Javidi Credit card fraud is a serious problem facing many banks, businesses, and consumers. In addition, counterfeit products such as computer chips, compact discs, and designer fashions, are arriving on our shores in great numbers. With the rapid advances in computers, CCD technology, image processing hardware and software, printers, scanners, and copiers, it is becoming increasingly easy to reproduce pictures, logos, symbols, paper currency, or patterns. Credit cards and passports currently use holograms as a security measure to thwart copying. But technology has advanced to the point where the holographic image can be easily acquired from a credit card - and a new hologram synthesized using commercially available optical components or hologram-producing equipment. We propose a novel system for security verification of credit cards, passports, and other IDs so that they cannot easily be reproduced. The system uses a new scheme of complex phase/amplitude patterns that cannot be seen and cannot be copied by an intensity-sensitive detector such as a CCD camera. The basic idea is to permanently and irretrievably bond a random phase mask to a primary identification pattern such as a fingerprint, a picture of a face, or a signature. For additional security, the primary pattern could also be phase encoded which results in a very secure system. Both the random phase mask and the primary pattern are identifiable in an optical system. ***
