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ATM Iris Recognition Coming Soon
Anonymous Cow writes "In Australia, iris technology is already being used by Qantas Airlines, Sydney Airport, foreign embassies, some banks and TAFE colleges, the Australian Protective Services, the Defence Department and the Police Integrity Commission. It is predicted that within five years every ATM in Australia will have iris recognition technology."
I beleive they work based on patterns in the relative luminance of different parts of the iris (ie disregarding colour).
The financial institution, just like they do with your PIN these days.
This isn't very different from fingerprint recognition. Chances of the iris changing are pretty slim.
And if your recognition suddenly stops working for some reason, go to the bank and get rescanned for the master copy.
Here's a (somewhat dated) story on CNN with more detail.
CNN Story on iris recognition
You laugh, but I've seen braille on drive-up ATMs.
Yeah, and it's there for three reasons, one silly, two practical.
The practical reason is that it's cheaper (and/or less complicated) for the companies who make the ATM to only buy one set of buttons. Why bother discriminating between the two?
Also, how can you be sure the person who's driving the car is the same person who's using the ATM?
The silly reason is one of standards - certain things must be handicap-accessable regardless of where they are, like there being wheelchair access to government buildings, social security offices and the like. There are no exceptions to the rule, even if the rule makes no sense under some circumstances.
It reminds me something I read about a town in Jersey that has to employ an elevator inspector even though the town has no elevators.
Triv
If you want to know more about who supplies this technology, go to http://www.iridiantech.com/
The site has some brief background on the technology and how it works.
If you want more technical information, go to http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/jgd1000/
While it would seem that iris would be a great biometric secutity device for ATM machines, it turns out that there is absolutely no way to make it pay off. If you look up the statistics it turns out that the average ATM fraud in the US per ATM machine per year is something like $50. As a result, even a really cheap iris scanner becomes hard to justify putting in EVERY single ATM out there. I doubt the fraud cost is much higher in Australia....
This is not meant to knock iris biometrics. I think they are probably the only real sensible one out there. The false pos/neg of stuff like face recognition is truly a joke...
The primary manufacturer of iris scan devices is:
http://www.iridiantech.com
What about eye injury? Yeah, I know we have redundant eyes and all. I don't know a whole lot about this technology, but what about the laser eye surgery that inproves your vision? Would something like this make enough of a change to mess up the scanner? But then again, like you said, just go and have the master updated. So I guess its not that big of a problem.
:-)
:-d
Oh, except for the fact that (atleast around here) most of the banks are very vulnerable to social engineering.
Btw: The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was Minority Report. *gets fake eyeballs and steals a bunch of money*
Can all fish swim?
Dunno how many of you have this problem, but I find that many ATMs are far too low to use comfortably. I'm 6' 2" tall, which isn't too huge for where I live (the UK), but I still find that most ATMs require me to bend fairly low in order to read the screen. There's one near my house that needs me to bend over like I'm about to take it up the ass. Hopefully when this takes off round here, the scanner will be placed in a nice and easy-to-use position for everyone (ha!)
Game dev and music blog
FWIW --
Iris scanners check to make sure the pupil moves and the eye is made of liquid BEFORE doing other checks, so a screenshot isn't going to help.
They do a neat little radar-screen-like scan, transforming a circle into a 2D map. That 2D map is what's compared. I would make a stab and say it's difficult to reconstruct the iris from the map.
Iris scans (as of right now) have the lowest failure rate of any biometric. They're better than fingerprints because the iris is behind the cornea, so it's less likely to be damaged or changed than the fingers - which are always going places they probably shouldn't.
HAND
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Actually, decent iris scanners look for a blood flow.
How will the Lasik surgery effect my retina scans? Is the ATM going to think, I am another person?
LASIK surgery modifies your cornea, not your retina, so my guess it it just won't matter.
See Lasik Institute explanations for details (perhaps more details than one would like).
Now, once law enforcement decides to use retinal scans to ID criminals, my guess is you'll probably see a black market in retinal modifications (as well as a lot of blind former criminals).
If you had read the article, you'd know that contacts (colored or otherwise), common eye surgery, and other potential factors do NOT affect this system.
Sometimes I feel like only the ACs read the article...