In the trenches // Jon ShamahKISS helps winnow biometric technologies
Fingerprints still appear to have the edge among biometric technologies; standardization drives down prices and increases choice of vendors, but it reduces the variety of metrics and the languages by which they are described
Go watch the film GATTACA. Not only because its stars Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, but mainly because it envisages a near-future world that makes extensive use of almost instantaneous DNA authentication in every aspect of life. This is the extreme end-product of a biometric controlled world.
There are many biometric technologies available, with each having many differing methodologies for collection analysis and storage. More are being added all the time.
So which one should we adopt as an authentication standard? A brief recap of the history of biometrics would help.
In biblical times life was simple and identity theft was even simpler. If you had a nearly blind father, and you wanted to trick him into giving you his birthright instead of giving it to your brother, then it was quite clear what was needed to be done. Genesis 27:11-15 tells it all: “Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, “But my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I’m a man with smooth skin. What if my father touches me? I would appear to be tricking him and would bring down a curse on myself rather than a blessing.” …. “Then Rebekah … also covered his hands and the smooth part of his neck with the goatskins.”
Since then, and until recently, use of biometrics has progressed little. It has only changed when requirements demanded stronger solutions. For example, in the Middle Ages, when a villain was known in a community and punished, proof of his death (authentication post mortem) was a full face biometric — cut off the villain’s head and stick it on a tall pole for all to see. It was easily “collected” and visible without additional technology.
Fingerprints used as a biometric were driven from a completely different need — The identification of the perpetrator of a criminal activity. In many countries they retain that stigma. It was recognized very early on that fingerprints were easily recoverable from crime scenes and they could be uniquely matched to those taken from an individual. This placed the individual at a location and so aided the process of solving crimes. The very fact that this form of biometric was so easily collected and was actually often inadvertently provided, were the main accelerants for the wide spread usage of fingerprinting. Fingerprints are unique to any individual, but still “fingerprint experts” were needed to absolutely confirm any pair were identical.
Our need for biometrics is to link
