By Brian Bergstein
The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Stuffing something in a public locker usually isn't a memorable experience. You drop a coin, take the key and move on.

But at the Statue of Liberty, recently reopened after a two-year closure, stashing a package offers a glimpse into the future. To rent, close and reopen lockers, visitors touch an electronic reader that scans fingerprints.

"It's easy," Taiwanese visitor Yu-Sheng Lee, 26, said after stowing a bag. "I think it's good. I don't have to worry about a key or something like that."

Like nearly every other tourist at the statue that day, this was Lee's first experience with biometrics - the identification of an individual based on personal characteristics like fingerprints, facial features or iris patterns.

While the technology is not new, having seen use for years to restrict access in corporate and military settings, it is only now creeping into everyday life. Over the next few years, people unfamiliar with the technology will be asked to use it in everything from travel settings to financial transactions.

The Nine Zero, an upscale hotel in Boston, recently began letting guests in its $3,000-a-night Cloud Nine suite enter and exit by looking into a camera that analyzes their iris patterns.

Piggly Wiggly Co. grocery stores in the South just launched a pay-by-fingerprint system, though pilot tests elsewhere have had lukewarm results.

"All these customer-facing applications, they're emerging," said Joseph Kim, a consultant with the International Biometric Group, which follows the industry. "We'll be seeing a lot more very, very soon. Whether that sticks or not depends on how customers feel about it."

Feelings seemed mixed about the lockers at the Statue of Liberty on a muggy New York afternoon last week.

Some people were befuddled by the system and had to put their fingers on the reader several times before a scan was properly made. Others forgot their locker number upon their return, or didn't remember which finger they had used to check it out.

One young woman accidentally put her ticket to the statue in the locker, requiring her to open it and then re-register it all over again with another finger scan.

With all the confusion, lines at the three touch-screen kiosks that control the bank of 170 lockers frequently stretched six or seven people deep, requiring a five-minute wait.

"I think it's overly complicated. It takes too much time," said Stephen Chemsak, 26, who lives in Japan. To him the old-fashioned key system would have been much better.

Representatives from the locker maker, Smarte Carte Inc., say the biometric aspect often requires a fair amount of coaching, especially for people who aren't very familiar with computers.