Sounds to me like a rehash of the X-Specs technolgy available for the Amiga back in the day. Their stuff was cheap enough for anyone who could afford an Amiga. The X-specs used the two fields of a frame of video to represent the left and right eye views. The glasses had LCD shutters which would sync with the fields. I even had some object modeling software which could use the X-Specs technology to give "real" 3d modelling results. Good fun way back when...

I worked during the holiday season in a warehouse that utilized these hand scanners. The scanners streamlined the clocking in/out line except for all of these 'underpaid and undervalued' employees who were unable to grasp the concept of (type in last 4 digits of ss#;insert hand;press enter). Let's keep in mind that, given the chance, most of these employees will cheat the system and do most anything they can to avoid actual work. It is truly sad, but that's a fact. In order to prevent people cheating the system, business are basically forced to use devices such as these to try to keep an accurate record of employees clocking in/out.

Besides, they already have your ss#, and all of your relevant tax information anyway.