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Ready or Not, Biometrics Finally in Stores
cancer4xmas writes: "It's very exciting to see USA Today's Technology front page saying, "Will that be cash, fingerprint or cellphone?" They're running a story on emerging biometric devices being the most fundamental change in personal finance since 1950, when the credit card was introduced. The concept is now being tested in some stores. Check out the full story." Now couple that tidbit with this morsel from wherley: "In a letter [scroll down a bit] to Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram newsletter, Ton van der Putte tells of a recent invitation from the BBC to comment on the addition of fingerprint biometrics to the British ID card. Using a digital camera and UV lamp he was able to make dummy fingerprints that fooled the readers - and in less time and less cost than similar experiments 10 years ago. He says: '...now the average do-it-yourselfer is able to achieve perfect results and requires only limited means and skills.'"
How long before theives chop off people's fingers and buy stuff with it? It's not like you can be reissued a new fingerprint.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I remember I read awhile ago in some magazine how BMW had the technology to use biometrics in place of keys. The reason they didn't was that someone brought up this idea.
Carjacker + knife + need for your finger = not a pretty scene.
That's kind of kept me off of Biometrics for awhile. Now where'd my tin foil hat go...
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
As someone working in biometrics and algorithm development, I would personally like to BEG the press to stop with the awful articles.
Almost every article says the same thing, makes awful assumptions, comments on the privacy issue, and generally screws the pooch.
Misconceptions and overhype can kill technologies for years....
The system in this article is voluntary, and that's great. So long as it's only volutary, I'm all for this.
One potential problem becomes what's "voluntary" soon becomes mandatory. We might as well learn from history. Two specific examples from US history:
(1) The Social Security Number was ~never~ supposed to be used as any kind of central identification number. Now, no one knows who I am without it. I would gladly dump my social security "promises of benefits" to not have a social security number.
(2) To get a driver's license in the state I moved to, I had to give a thumbprint. I've never had fingerprints taken before in my life.
Are we safer as a result? All I know is that now my identity can be more easily tracked by central governmental organizations and those with sufficent access privileges, despite my wishes.
Technology is a tool, not a solution. Just like a hammer, it can be used for much good, but it's easy for those in power to convert it into something pretty sinister. If it's all the same, I'll keep my ATM card. It's a lot easier to change my bank account number than my fingerprint or eyeball.
Since that bloke showed how to use gelatine to fool a fingerprint machine, how long before jello becomes a controlled substance?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've thought about this for awhile, and I am thinking:
Why don't people just cut off their fingers and trade them as a commodity? Each finger is access to a different system...
For instance, if I work for a bank, but I want to get a vacation cheap, I just trade a finger with my buddy who works for some airline. He does what he wants with my bank, and I get the plane tickets I need to get away from this country.
The only problem is, if I want 10 things at once, how do I access the system without any fingers?
Maybe they should sell voice-recognition software with it.
Talk about giving someone the finger, geesh.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Using a credit card typically requires a signature to match against the one on the card's back. Using an ATM/debit card requires a numerical code to match with the bank's records. Are biometrics really a good replacement for the card, or would they be a better replacement for the signature or ATM code? As there will be a secondary piece of ID anyway, why tie up the fingerprint with all the bank info, when the print could be just tied to the ID?
Intellectuals! Liberals! Peacemongers! IDIOTS!!!
Using a digital camera and UV lamp he was able to make dummy fingerprints that fooled the readers - and in less time and less cost than similar experiments 10 years ago. He says: '...now the average do-it-yourselfer is able to achieve perfect results and requires only limited means and skills.'"
This is the whole problem with market driven products as opposed to product driven products. Companies rush to produce a product and get it to market to capture some degree of market share even though their product may suck. We have endured years of this under the Microsoft paradigm in that Microsoft advertises years in advance what products they are going to produce, sets a time-line, and then by-god the products will ship by that date. Never mind the quality. I much prefer Apple's way of doing things in that they do not talk about what they are doing, and they then ship a product when it is done. Meanwhile the rest of the computer industry is busy copying Microsofts strategy and the quality of software for the most part is slipping down the tubes.
Products such as biometrics especially needs to be completely wrung out to determine if it can be faked. They did not, it can be, but what do you bet they take it to market anyway?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
The top rated comment in this thread will be "Score:5, Funny." How predictable...
Tcl my Pico! There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Reading through the responses to this technology, it seems that several issues are being addressed/readdressed:
1) Mandatory tagging of criminals - There seems to be a fundamental difference between tagging someone as part of their sentence and tagging someone after their sentence has been served (eg, after release from prison). The latter seems a dangerous trend since it indicates that the punishment for certain crimes may change in an arbitrary fashion, even *after* a criminal has served their time and been "rehabilitated" by societal punishments.
Granted, some crimes are heinous and deserve drastic punishments, but punishments should be known at the time of sentencing. Make the punishment as harsh as is warranted (eg, death sentence or consecutive life sentences effectively ensures that an offender never returns to society), but once a punishment has been fulfilled , no additional arbitrary punishments should be levied. Being unable to agree on what the rule-of-law is at the time of sentencing is very bad. A rule-of-law which is not transparent and clear is not a rule-of-law.
2) RFID technology is good|bad - Anyone who has spent their life thinking about technology knows that technology itself it neither our damnation nor our savior. It is amoral and merely a tool created and used by humans to leverage our ideas.
However, history has shown that we have a penchant for killing each other over issues with no obvious resolution (eg, Who's God is better, Who's skin color is better, etc). Technology just speeds up the process of letting us work out our differences, and, when that fails, subjugate/maim/torture/kill the enemy when they it is obvious that they will not take on our point of view.
3) The posters are "anti-technologist fear mongers" - since this crowd is generally very technology savvy, it is probably more likely that you misunderstand the message being articulated. People on Slashdot certainly seem to get more worked up that your general everyday nongeek citizenry. But that is likely because of the "slippery-slope" issues that are addressed. Looking at how humans use and misuse technology to abuse each other, it is often clear to those with a background in technology what form the abuses could take. Generally, it seems that humans eventually arrive at a solution better for everyone (eg, more tolerant), but only after a more short-term period which exploits the technology to the severe disadvantage of an unfortunate minority.
BTW, although annoying that the article is not based on RFID technology, that hardly matters in the grand scheme. GPS, RFID, biometrics, DRM, etc. are all just technologies. They have amazing potential for benefit of societies. But unless the potential for human-rights abuse is acknowledged and carefully monitored, things will get very bad before things get better.
No technology is without potential for abuse. Period.
The linux hacker
Or, I could pull out my credit card, which occupies the same space in my wallet as the required ID, and make my payment without signing up for anything or introducing new privacy concerns. On top of that, my credit card gives me 1% cash back.
I think consumers are going to do the math on this one and figure it's not worth the hassle. Sounds like the incentive is mostly for the store to avoid the credit card fees.
Well, quite a long while I would think. I would imagine that the teenage checkout person at the supermarket would scream bloody murder at the sight of you using a severed finger, getting blood all over the biometric scanner. I can see it now:
"Paper or plast-- AAAAHHHHHHHH!"
Not exactly the most effective scam to try.
Its kind of scary that a fingerprint is so easy to forge. It would be so simple to wipe out someone's life savings.
I would have expected banks to adopt this technology only after it has been widely proven to be secure. Instead they are the guinea pigs risking your money. Something's wrong with this picture.
I'm glad I didn't have an account there. Would your money be federally insured if it were stolen by a forged fingerprint? How could you prove it was a forgery (assuming the forger hid his face from the camera above the ATM)?
I was with a group that evaluated biometric authentication as a primary systems. The primary flaw that was pointed out that no one seems to really talk about is, what if someone compromises the key server? In a traditional authentication system, you simply change your keys. Since in a biometric system the keys are based off of the human body, not only has this compromised system been comletely destroyed, but potentially ALL biometric systems used by the same individuals is now compromised until the day they die.
That was a pretty big problem.
We decided on using biometrics as a 3rd or 4th level of authentication (to verify that someone using all of the other levels of authentication are who they say they are to a reasonable level of accuracy).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Credit cards are getting harder too, with smartchips and strategically placed strips of thin metal inside. To fake one requires much more sophisticated equipment than five years ago.
Save Sam and Max!
...now I get to stand in line behind a dumb-blonde soccer mom, some kids goofing with the hardware...
Place a kid within 5 feet of a button and he/she will inevitably press it. Repeatedly.
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
I don't know why all of these so-called "security experts" keep on advocating biometrics with little or no understanding of their real properties, much less how they should be properly used. Biometrics can be used as unique identifiers, but biometrics are not secrets. They can provide a unique identifier in an already trusted environment, but alone they cannot be used for authentication, which is what so many of these "experts" are ready to do. If I steal your fingerprint using any of the simple yet effective techniques (none of which require me to cut off your finger) described by Ton van der Putte, it can't be un-stolen, and nobody will be able to give you a "replacement" fingerprint.
A quote that iluustrates this naivete from the USA Today article: "Biometrics is one way to really identify the customer you're dealing with," he [Steve Vallance] says. What a foolish, naive statement. Alone, biometrics cannot really identify anybody.
I really can't do any better than point people out to an article in yet another issue of Crypto-Gram, which first came out five years ago: Biometrics: Truths and Fictions.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
So your fingerprint becomes your SpeedPass or EZ-Pass... so what? Neither existing system is actually a financial system, they're an identifer that tracks back to an existing credit card number, that's the actual financial account.
So, really, what's the incentive for a consumer to want to use their fingerprint rather than something hanging on their keychain or in their wallet. Yeah, the keychain or wallet can be stolen... but safety laws already exist to protect your accounts.
In short, the current system isn't that broken... this solution has privacy concerns attached. Seems like the answer to a question nobody's asking...
So shine an LED through the finger to see if there's a pulse. Those portable heart rate monitors are cheap, so the technology can't add that much to the final cost.
This is far easier than pretending a severed thumb is your own, and with the use of acetone based prints (from the gelatine master) it is virtually impossible for a layperson to determine that you have an overlayed print on your thumb.
Just your $0.02... :)
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Microsoft would run this service, and advertise it as 100% secure. I feel safer every day.
Oh yeah, and it would be an anti-felony, punishable by a $1000 reward, to use somebody else's biometrics to obtain money, goods, or services. (If that makes you feel unsafe, remember that listening to a CD that you didn't buy, such as if a friend plays a CD and you happen to be in the vicinity, will constitute piracy punishable by death. Feel better? Good.)
A better system might require several biometric techniques together to reach an identification.(hand shape and finger prints would go together nicely)
This article mentions the Asian woman fingerprint problem about 3/4 of the way down, but doesn't mention a source for this claim.
And what about a 4 digit PIN number? 1 in 1000 people will have the same code. The trick is to not use biometrics as the primary key, but instead use it as an overall means of verification.
For instance - How much less credit card fraud would there be if you had to verify not by signiature, but by fingerprint? Much harder to reproduce *quickly* by a purse snatcher / pickpocket.
But rather stealing the representation of my finger.
When the credit card db gets hacked (and it's happened several times), you just have to cancel it and get issued a new card.
When the fingerprint db gets hacked, they can't issue me a new finger.
A fleshcolored, spit wetted, rubber sleeve over a finger, with a copy of someone elses finger would work quite well, and be undectable by the minimally interested checkout line clerk.
If all you need is a fingerprint, then everyone will be wearing gloves soon. We leave fingerprints everywhere! New crime of the future: Person gets your fingerprint of a glass or a door or some other public place and racks up a mint. Say what you will about credit cards, at least you dont leave yoru credit card number, expiration date and billing address on every surface you touch. Theres something to be said about slightly insecure systems. The less secure something is the less easy it is to steal, since people are more suspicious of insecure systems then they are of supposedly "secure" systems. I can see a day where your credit card number is quantum encrypted on a microchip implanted in yoru skull. And the ability to dispute charges will no longer exist of course, because the system is unbreakable! Except for the short, easily memorizable password needed to unlock the quantum encryption. We can seethis already with identity theft. Now that youre identifiable by a number (instead of in person, as in the old days) anyone with access to that number is you, and everyone believes that its you, because the system is supposed to be secure.
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9808.html#biom etrics
Biometrics are seductive: you are your key. Your voiceprint unlocks the door of your house. Your retinal scan lets you in the corporate offices. Your thumbprint logs you on to your computer. Unfortunately, the reality of biometrics isn't that simple.
Biometrics are the oldest form of identification. Dogs have distinctive barks. Cats spray. Humans recognise each other's faces. On the telephone, your voice identifies you as the person on the line. On a paper contract, your signature identifies you as the person who signed it. Your photograph identifies you as the person who owns a particular passport.
What makes biometrics useful for many of these applications is that they can be stored in a database. Alice's voice only works as a biometric identification on the telephone if you already know who she is; if she is a stranger, it doesn't help. It's the same with Alice's handwriting; you can recognize it only if you already know it. To solve this problem, banks keep signature cards on file. Alice signs her name on a card, and it is stored in the bank (the bank needs to maintain its secure perimeter in order for this to work right). When Alice signs a check, the bank verifies Alice's signature against the stored signature to ensure that the check is valid.
There are a bunch of different biometrics. I've mentioned handwriting, voiceprints, and face recognition. There are also hand geometry, fingerprints, retinal scans, DNA, typing patterns, signature geometry (not just the look of the signature, but the pen pressure, signature speed, etc.), and others. The technologies behind some of them are more reliable than others, and they'll all improve.
"Improve" means two different things. First, it means that the system will not incorrectly identify an impostor as Alice. The whole point of the biometric is to prove that Alice is Alice, so if an impostor can successfully fool the system it isn't working very well. This is called a false positive. Second, "improve" means that the system will not incorrectly identify Alice as an impostor. Again, the point of the biometric is to prove that Alice is Alice, and if Alice can't convince the system that she is her then it's not working very well, either. This is called a false negative. In general, you can tune a biometric system to err on the side of a false positive or a false negative.
Biometrics are great because they are really hard to forge: it's hard to put a false fingerprint on your finger, or make your retina look like someone else's. Some people can mimic others' voices, and Hollywood can make people's faces look like someone else, but these are specialized or expensive skills. When you see someone sign his name, you generally know it is him and not someone else.
Biometrics are lousy because they are so easy to forge: it's easy to steal a biometric after the measurement is taken. In all of the applications discussed above, the verifier needs to verify not only that the biometric is accurate but that it has been input correctly. Imagine a remote system that uses face recognition as a biometric. "In order to gain authorization, take a Polaroid picture of yourself and mail it in. We'll compare the picture with the one we have in file." What are the attacks here?
Easy. To masquerade as Alice, take a Polaroid picture of her when she's not looking. Then, at some later date, use it to fool the system. This attack works because while it is hard to make your face look like Alice's, it's easy to get a picture of Alice's face. And since the system does not verify that the picture is of your face, only that it matches the picture of Alice's face on file, we can fool it.
Similarly, we can fool a signature biometric using a photocopier or a fax machine. It's hard to forge the vice-president's signature on a letter giving you a promotion, but it's easy to cut his signature out of another letter, paste it on the letter giving you a promotion, and then p
You don't need to fake a credit card, just nab one and it's all yours until the owner reports it missing! Merchants don't bother checking to see whether or not the card is yours, even if your PHOTO is on it, much less your signature!
Preface: I am posting AC and not naming any names here.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, when the phrase "identity theft" had first entered the lexicon but before the media discovered how well they could capture audiences with its mere mention, I worked with a card issuer on a so-called "secure card" test program. The idea was twofold: merchants were getting complacent in terms of trying to verify that the person presenting the card was actually the cardholder, and credit card fraud was an increasing problem.
The proposed solution to both dilemmas was to issue cards with the cardholder's PHOTOGRAPH on the FRONT of the card. We'd indemnify cardholders against any fraudulent purchases (as opposed to beyond the first $50.. it was a novel idea back then) for any bogus transaction made with one of these photocards. Cashiers weren't bothering to check the back for a signature, but surely they'd see if the photo on the front matched the person making the purchase, right? LOL.
Existing cardholders were allowed to volunteer for the test program by responding to an insert in their bill. Along with the application, they had to send in a photocopy of their drivers' license, and a small color photograph of themselves which was easily identifiable as the same person in the drivers license photo. About 10,000 such cards were eventually issued, with surveys included and sent as a follow-up to see what the cardholders encountered. During the test period, here are a few interesting things we found.
1... Merchants weren't checking the photo, even though it was right there as a 1.5" x 1.5" image on the front left side of the card.
Many cardholders reported no problem giving their spouse the card to use, where the photo wasn't even the same sex as the person making the purchase.
There were a lot of folks surprised that cashiers didn't even notice the photograph.
There were a lot MORE folks surprised that cashiers noticed the photograph but paid it no attention. For example, female customer would use card issued to JOHN DOE with a picture of a man on the card, no questions asked by merchant.
2... Merchants who did check the photo were overly attentive.
People who had changed hairstyles, dyed their hair, grown or shaved facial hair since the photo had been taken, or even gained or lost weight were having their cards refused because the photo wasn't a "perfect" match.
If a card was not outright refused due to appearance changes, a store manager was often called by the cashier, or some other delay was introduced into the purchase, inconveniencing both the cardholder and the merchant.
3... Some of the merchant services reps around the country were issued temporary expense cards with someone else's name and photograph on them (intentionally, as part of the test).
These cards were set to return a "Call" response on transaction attempts, which tells the merchant they need to call the card issuer to get special instructions before accepting the card.
Many merchants ignored the response and ran the transaction through as a "Force" process without bothering to see if there was a problem with the card. In live circumstances this would have resulted in a chargeback to the merchant with no recourse.
Merchants who did call were instructed to check the ID of the customer against the name and photo on the card. In nearly half of these cases, the merchants wound up doing a Force anyway (another chargeback). The reps were told to try and explain it away - "Oh that's my boyfriend's card" etc - and it worked pretty well.
4... Though this obviously is not the party line... Credit cards are as good as cash but provide next to zero security. Ask yourself when was the last time you tried making a purchase on plastic a
- Steal credit card
- Shop where no teller will verify card
Of course, Home Depot has built in fraud protection; they have self checkout lanes that require each item purchased to be registered by weight after scanning. Of course my 4x8 plywood, 5 bags of mulch, and 10' PVC pipe are difficult to balance on the scale after scanning so a teller must assist me (and check my card/id in the process.)I only hope that my story about finding the severed finger near the power saw will fly when they install those readers...
On a similiar note, Walmart seems to have no problem searching every person who leaves the store / counting everything in your cart. This would make sense if it were not for the teller that just did the same thing 20 seconds before. It seems odd to me that this annoyance is somehow acceptable? Some people have supplied good and back feedback over here. Lower prices appear to calm such complaints.
The first dog barks. All other dogs bark at the first dog.
What about people who are missing digits? I have an professor that is missing is ring finger completely. Now, I imagine this would be more focused on thumb prints or you index finger, but I'm sure that there are more than a few people who are missing the fingers of choice for a project like this.
When I pay for something by debit, I enter a private PIN number to complete the transaction. If the pin is incorrect, the whole transaction needs to be repeated. After a certain number of attempts (usually no more than 3 or 4), a retailer will simply refuse to honor the card at that time (more often than not suggesting that perhaps the card may need to be replaced by the bank). ATM's are exactly the same way... after a certain number of failed attempts, the atm will simply keep the card and I have to wait for the bank to mail out a new one.
Now like it or not, systems which work by scanning fingerprints *CAN* be fooled consistently by a sufficiently technically minded individual. Systems which require a secretly selected (and well chosen) authentication number cannot be fooled by any means other than sheer lucky guessing (and you'll run out of tries long before your odds of guessing right even approach being something more than negligible). IMO, that's about as foolproof as we're ever going to get (unless or until it becomes technologically possible to read other people's thoughts).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why stop with the steady stream of articles that point out the real shortcomings of biometrics? So you can keep your job? Sorry, but that's a pretty selfish reason that only works for you, your boss, and a handful of investors.
As Bruce Schneier pointed out years ago, biometrics are a double edged sword. Biometrics are hard to forge (I am deliberately ignoring the $0.50 gelatin trick that fools fingerprint readers since I assume someone will repair that particular shortcoming,) and look to the implementations of the systems for the weaknesses instead. Yes, they are hard to forge. But once the data is turned into bits, it's pathetically easy to copy. And you can't put the genie back in the bottle it once it's gone!
It comes down to "who do you trust?" Do you really trust the department store or the bank to not keep a copy of your biometric identification? What's to keep an unscrupulous merchant from intercepting a copy of your raw biometric data, and saving a copy?
I see signature capture pads all over the place these days. I categorically refuse to use them because I have no confidence that my signature won't be captured and replayed by the wrong person. You can't tell me that a "secure" system will prevent this, because I can't tell a secure system by looking at one. The promise of Open Source is no guarantee, either. Even if it had a picture of a penguin on the outside, a spiffy GNU-y logo, and OSF and SourceForge brand stickers on it, how do I know it's really "IdentifyMe_2.0" and not some hacked-up demo being run by Vinnie the Chiseler? People believe that when they walk into a Home Despot that Home Despot doesn't keep a permanent record of their signature. Of course they keep it; it's actually required by law to retain the audit copy for 36 months (42 in Illinois.)
There are also plenty of known cases of fraudulent ATM machines that read your card, accept your PIN, spit out "TEMPORARILY UNABLE TO DISPENSE CASH", and report both your card and PIN to the machine's owner. How is a user supposed to be able to authenticate the biometric device is genuine; that it's not a sham, running a copy for a thief?
How will this change with fingerprinting, hand geometry, retinal scans, or whatever the biometric system of the week may be? It won't; it can't. And since the systems can never be trusted to not "steal" or retain copies of identification for future playback, the systems should never be used in the first place. Using them even one time will put your irreplaceable data in a system it may never escape from.
Biometrics are a technology that should not ever be mainstreamed. They might work fine for a secure military facility, but once they're out in the general populous for any length of time, the protections they represent are gone.
John
CA, TX, HI, GA, CO and it's optional in WV.
And they don't do a damn thing (I maintain that it makes things worse, because people believe it's useful when its not, thereby increasing fraud.) In no state are they even remotely forensic quality.
If somebody gets your credit card information, you can just cancel the card and get a new one.
If somebody, somehow, no matter how, gets your biometric information, what do you do?
That's right - switch to credit cards.
I am a genius; therefore, you suck.
Last night in the checkout I was behind a very nervous man who got what he claimed was -HIS- ATM PIN wrong 14 times! It was quite obvious that he was using somebody else's card, he eventually got it but I watched him try several permutations of someone's birthday. After he left I asked the clerk what she thought and she was totally clueless, she said she deals with people who forget their PIN numbers all day long. I asked if the store had a policy to check their state ID against the card they were trying to use if it's obviously fraudulent, and she said she's only interested in keeping the line moving.
Now you know one reason identity theft is so easy, store clerks are letting people try PIN numbers willy-nilly until they get the right one. There should be a 'five times' law, after which they cut your card up.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Let's assume biometrics have become reliable (combination of retina - thumbprint and maybe even DNA sampling). If this were the case then a biometric profile could be used as an ID instead of a name and address...
You want to open a new bankaccount, you don't give your name and address but your biometric profile as ID. This should satisfy the banks' need for verifying that it's the account holder that is approving a particular transaction since the biometric profiles match.
In such a system the only thing you have to safeguard is the link between your biometric profile and your name and address. As long as there isn't a Big Brother database that can link both sets of information you could safeguard your anonymity pretty well...
Reality check : Reliable biometrics as I described above would probably get us into a Gattaca-esque society in no time... Oh well, in a perfect world...
Not a good argument. Listen, people can't fly, but let's jump off the nearest 10-story building, and we'll learn how to fly on the way down. I mean, the advantages of being able to fly must outweigh any conceivable drawbacks, no?
The flaw with your argument is that biometric identifiers, once compromised, cannot be changed. What happens if you get your fingerprints lifted? A finger transplant? No, at that point your only choice is to have some sort of fraud alert put on your fingerprint, and then you can no longer use it. So it's useless for you, forever. If you'd read the article you'd see that the authors complained that they discovered critical flaws in fingerprint readers ten years ago, including that they could be fooled using fake gelatin fingers, and they still haven't fixed that. You think Microsoft is bad, leaving IIS unpatched for three months? Try ten years... The only conclusion is that the readers can't be fixed.
Blind adoption of some shiny new technology without at least some foresight is too common, and really, really stupid. Electronic voting is another great example of this...
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Back in the days when I was growing up in what was then a peaceful little village on the outskirts of Derby, kids could be kids, paedophiles had not been invented, all that mattered was that Forest lost and if the Rams won, well, that was a bonus. But regardless what was happening at the Baseball Ground, if anyone tried shoplifting from the local newsagent's, they were in for a surprise a few weeks down the line. Because the paper lady had eyes like a hawk, and if she spotted you doing something -- and if you did anything, she would spot it -- she would just add it on to your parents' paper bill, and when they got the bill they could deal with you as they saw fit -- which usually meant you had to write a letter of apology to the newsagent, and you'd probably have to stand up to write it. If you ever gave her a mouthful, other people in the village would express disapproval - "There goes that Alice, do you know what she said to Mrs W. the other day?" - until you felt you had no choice but to make your peace with her. She knew how old you were, whether your parents smoked and what brand -- and she would also know if a packet of fags or a can of booze was really for someone else {though I suspect the real explanation was that the parent in question would simply phone the newsagent while you were on the way and say they had sent you. Most of the people in my end of the village were on the phone}. They don't make them like her anymore.
It's my contention that no automated system will ever be as good as our old paper lady, may she rest in peace. She may have had a vulnerability, but either nobody dared exploit it, or they were just too amazed by her apparent superhuman powers to bother. Why can't we just go back to using human beings to do jobs human beings are good at and use machines for jobs machines are good at?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I think it's about time we all got this guy's fingerprints and started making thousands of simultaneous purchases worldwide.
He acquired his 15 seconds of internet fame by duplicating and sharing his frequent shopper's card via his personal web site. I can only imagine the junk mail he receives on account of that profile.
CO doesn't want fingerprints. I just got my (first/new) driver's license here in CO 1 year ago. No (thumb|finger)print taken or asked for.
I had to give a thumbprint.
Where I live, bank branches are asking for thumbprints from non-account holders wanting to cash checks.
This, despite:
- The check was written on that bank.
- The person can produce a driver's license to verify that they are the payee.
Yes, it's true that it cuts down costs of fraudulent checks that banks must bear. But it also increases risks to check cashers that their special identifier may be misused. What guarantee does the bank provide that the thumbprint won't be used for the single purpose of preventing fraud on that transaction and that it will be destroyed to prevent any possibility of further misuse?Heavy-handed tactics like this have really driven people to want to use cash more and more.
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But imagine if ATM machines used OCR to record the serial numbers of bills dispensed to people and if banks were required to inventory serial numbers of incoming currency, too.
Credit card and debit card transactions have already reduced the proportion of anonymous financial transactions. The technology exists to reduce financial anonymity a lot further.
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