1. A biometric verification system for determining whether a person's detected biometric characteristics match any biometric templates stored on a database containing the biometric templates of a large number of users without relying on a non-biometric discriminator to convert a one-to-many verification task to a one-to-one verification task, the system comprising: a video camera and video digitizer for acquiring a digital representation of a human facial image; a biometric sensor for acquiring a digital representation of a human fingerprint; a processor associated with said camera, digitizer and biometric sensor, said processor being capable of processing signals from said camera, digitizer and biometric sensor; heuristic ordering software resident on said processor for comparing said digital representation of a human facial image with stored facial images in a database of facial images, generating a match confidence therefrom and rank-ordering said database from highest to lowest match confidence; and verification software resident on said processor for comparing said digital representation of a human fingerprint with stored fingerprints associated with said rank-ordered database in the order created by the heuristic ordering software to verify the identity of said person and provide an output signal indicative of recognition