Phones soon could recognize you by how you move or walk

Pentagon may make technology available commercially by 2020.

Within 18 months, your phone may be able to identify you based on the gait of your walk, the tension in your hand or the way your thumb moves across the touch screen.

That’s the Pentagon’s plan: It’s in the final phase of testing technology that will reduce smartphone users’ reliance on difficult-to-remember passwords or an endless stream of text message verification codes, an official there said.

It’s working with computer chipmakers and smartphone developers to make the technology commercially available as early as 2020, said Steven Wallace, a systems innovation scientist at the Pentagon’s Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA. It’s currently testing the system on 50 phones at the Defense Department.

“Our goal from the very start was not to have something that was focused solely on the DoD,” Wallace said. “Our focus from the start was something usable at the commercial level.”

The tech companies haven’t made any firm commitments to adopt the identification system but appear eager to integrate the technology into smartphones within the next year or two, Wallace said.

He declined to name the companies DISA is working with but said if all goes well, the technology “will be available in the majority of handsets” in the United States.

The technology would offer an extra layer of security for smartphone users by ensuring that a thief — or someone who, say, picks up a phone left on a subway seat or park bench — doesn’t get access to all the personal and professional information stored inside the device, Wallace said. If stolen phones are inoperable, there’s less of a market for them. And more broadly, if consumer devices are better protected, national security improves: It gets tougher for hackers to steal information and intellectual property.

But the Pentagon’s motivation is not just about securing consumers: If the tool is commercially available, the Pentagon can get the extra protection without paying an arm and a leg for specialized devices that only highly secured industries are using. In the past, Wallace said, the Pentagon has built super-secure smartphones, but they’ve been too costly to deploy to anyone but a handful of top officials — costing more than $4,500 per unit.