Facing biometrics' limits

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Fears are unfounded

The tinfoil hat crowd (gotta block the government mind control rays) is always yelping about biometrics, as if the presence of a permanently binding identifier of a person is a gateway to government tracking of our movements. Realize this - "they" already can track your movements, using a much more easily computed means - credit cards and cell phone records. Doing it with biometrics is too costly by comparison, so they use the much more effective ways to do so, if they want to. So why would a consumer benefit from biometrics being implemented? Better sleep, for one.

Right now, I can open a credit account in your name using just text data - knowledge - of your Name, Address and SSN. The innumerable data disclosure fiascos from the VA and others make that data essentially public. The response from the government and credit reporting agencies is to advocate [/]iex post facto vigilence - watch your credit for unusual activity, and if you catch it, start cleaning up. That's reactive, and causes me, for one, to lose sleep.

If, on the other hand, I were able to bind my fingerprints to my credit record, and require that, in order for someone to open credit in my name, they would have to electronically match the print on record, that would certainly raise the bar on these ID theives, no? That's proactive protection, and I'm willing to give my fingerprints to the credit reporting agencies or others to protect my identity. They are making their money and ruining your life by taking advantage of the fact that it is far too easy to become you in a credit sense.

Most states require a fingerprint for drivers licenses because they want to prevent people from creating multiple identities by getting multiple licenses. The same goes for public assistance, where double dipping fraud has jeopardized the availability of funds for all because of the high fraud rates. These systems are protected by law from being the subjects of fishing expeditions for unsolved crimes.

The real travesty in biometrics is how poor the FBI's matching system is, which has put a black mark on the industry by virtue of it's inability to make an accurate match. That is a technology problem that is limited to the traditional AFIS systems, but is not the same technology that the banks or other entities are considering using. The FBI's system is only accurate to 1 in 10,000 at best, which is why they make incorrect identifications and miss so many criminal matches. Their system is also incompatible with the format of the data that a bank would use to positively ID their customer to conveniently protect that customer's access to their capital.

Biometrics at least is something that you can walk into a court room and say, "I am me" and show that you have the real finger that creates the real print. There are cases of ID theft where it becomes a significant challenge just to figure out who's the real person.

Posted by: SecurityThroughObscurity   Posted on: 06/23/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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