UK To Start Biometric Passport Trials

pearljam145 writes that the "UK is planning to test biometric passports that will include face and iris or fingerprint recording and recognition for a 6 month period on 10000 volunteers. Read here for more details. A face recognition chip is going to be the primary biometric and iris or fingerprint scanning will be use as a secondary biometric. However face recognition might not be the perfectly viable solution since it has produced too many false positives in the past. Face recogntion to this date is not robust enough to support real time recognition in a crowd (more failures?). Only with cooperation of the subject does this system produce good results. So will face recognition join fingerprint and iris recognition in a long list of obtrusive recognition techniques?"

Comments

Imagine...

[Zapperlink]

Imagine the privacy invasions with these techniques but imagine also the coolness of the future finally becoming the present.

Helping to make a reality

[bmzf]

of people getting their body parts stolen. Ouch.

Re:Helping to make a reality

[Anonymous Coward]

now you wont wake up in a bathtub with your kidney stolen, just your index finger. i for one welcome our new orwellian overlords.

Re:Biometrics are bad because...

[Ignis Flatus]

But nobody can ever perfectly "steal" any of your biometrics. Sure, they can make gloves that contain fingerprint whorls good enough to fool the scanners of 2005... but the scanners made in 2006 might also feature a chemical sniffer that determines if its real skin or latex.

Well fine then, I'll just have my gloves made from real skin.

What the fuck next?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will they start examining stool samples as well?

"Sorry, sir, we have detected couscous and figs in your feces. If you'll kindly step over there towards the gentlemen with the M-16s, they'll escort you to your flight to Guantanamo Bay."

At least..

[Exiler]

At least they're not using it for authentication... now, where did I put that key.. *flips through his keychain of severed fingers and eyes*

Obviously this would work best in England

[egg troll]

The horrible state of English dentistry means that each Britian possesses a set of uniquely fucked-up teeth. Simply entering them into a database should be trivial.

Re:Obviously this would work best in England

[Nexus Seven]

Making things even simpler is the useful fact that the population of Planet Earth contains precisely zero "Britians", whatever they are.

I can see it now, at the airport...

[aaaurgh]

Igor, fetch my identity.

<Igor> Yeth, mathter. </Igor> (opening suitcase full of body parts)

Re:The rich and famous...

[Zork the Almighty]

On a less serious note, if criminals offer to "rearrange your face", you might actually be interested.