A system and method for identifying and controlling the movement of various items, e.g., suitcases, associated with respective ones of various individuals, e.g., those desiring to travel on a selected means of transportation such as an airline, railway or the like. The system includes a plurality of programmable fingerprint readers each associated with a respective one of the items, a fingerprint scanner for scanning fingerprints from each individual and associating it with one or more of the items, a CPU for receiving readings from each of the item fingerprint readers and information from the scanner, and a retrieving unit (e.g., such as one owned by the transporting party) which retrieves selected ones of the fingerprint readings stored by the CPU for comparing with also retrieved readings from the respective fingerprint readers when the traveling individual presents an item to the transporting party for travel.