Noun | 1. | ![]() act of terrorism, terrorism, terrorist act - the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear DNA fingerprint, genetic fingerprint - biometric identification obtained by examining a person's unique sequence of DNA base pairs; often used for evidence in criminal law cases automatic face recognition, face recognition, facial recognition - biometric identification by scanning a person's face and matching it against a library of known faces; "they used face recognition to spot known terrorists" fingerprint - a print made by an impression of the ridges in the skin of a finger; often used for biometric identification in criminal investigations finger scan, finger scanning - biometric identification by automatically scanning a person's fingerprints electronically iris scanning - biometric identification by scanning the iris of the eye; "the structure of the iris is very distinctive" signature recognition - biometric identification by automatically scanning a person's signature and matching it electronically against a library of known signatures retinal scanning - biometric identification by scanning the retina of the eye; "identification by retinal scanning is complicated by eye movements" voiceprint - biometric identification by electronically recording and graphically representing a person's voice; "voiceprints are uniquely characteristic of individual speakers" identification - evidence of identity; something that identifies a person or thing |