Germany Begins Iris Scans at Frankfurt Airport

securitas writes "Deutsche Welle reports that at Germany's Frankfurt airport biometric iris scans of airline passengers have begun. The German government says that the six-month pilot project is part of Europe's 18-country Automated and Biometrics-based Border Checks initiative to improve 'border control routines' and domestic security, with a full-scale system to follow. The system uses an iris scan embedded in a passenger's machine-readable passport, which is compared to the passenger's iris with an onsite scan. Travelers must 'sign a data security document' and agree to be checked by border guards. The article also references the capability of an iris scan to determine drug and alcohol consumption. The European Parliament is considering replacing all of its traditional passports with a new European biometric passport by 2005. The IRISPASS system (press release) was built by Byometric systems, Iridian and Oki Electric Industry. More coverage at CNet/ZDNet, AP/USA Today and mirrors at AJC, and CNN."

Comments

Iris changes

[FlyingOrca]

I would think the scan will have to be renewed on a fairly regular basis.

Still, this leaves me wondering. We hear a lot of negative stuff about universal ID cards of one stripe or another (I won't go so far as to call it FUD, it may be quite reasonable). Most of the cautions expressed seem to revolve around duplication / forgery by criminals etc.

Anyone have any info on how hard it would be to fool an iris (or retina) scanner? Might be a good substitute for universal IDs. I mean, the ostensible principles of univeral IDs aren't all bad...

Abnormalities?

[MysteriousMystery]

What about the blind? People who use colored or distorted contacts (IE shaded contacts, contacts with designs on them), or other abnormalities of the eye. There might be a lot of ways people could potentially bypass a system like that.

Re:Iris changes

[diablobynight]

If all the machine does is make sure that your IRIS, matches the Iris on your card you hand them, than isn't still going to be fakeable, because the control element is based on the idea that your passport is right about what that persons Iris is supposed to be?

I submit this idea, does it even matter? How many terrorist acts are commited by people who snuck, 9-11 was commited by people who came into the US legally

Re:Iris changes

[orangesquid]

I'm also curious about the ability to detect "drug and alcohol consumption." Is this done by checking iris/pupil characteristics?

And, drugs---you mean like antidepressants and anxiolytics, both of which are wont to induce mydriasis?

"I'm sorry, sir. Dilation says can't let you on the plane. You're either on speed, or you're on happy pills, and either way, we don't want you."

If there are other detectable characteristics in the iris area besides pupil dilatation, I'd love to know. Any ocular pharmacology researchers out there?

Open Biometrics for the home?

[bluethundr]

I've always had a geeky dreamproject of supplementing my traditional lock and key entry to my house with biometric security devices. The idea being that in the event of a systems failure, instead of being locked out of the house I could fall back to the old lock-n-key method.

My idea would be to use either iris-scanning, breath analyzation or some combination of the two (ideally a choice so that if one were to fail, say the iris, the breath analyzer would let you in). Much more efficient than fumbling around for keys in the dark! And a blessing to the drunken Irishman I can sometimes be (not all, but SOME stereotypes certainly hold more than a little water...and occasionally some whiskey too!) I digress.

But the last time I checked, (this was a few years ago) such devices were not so readily available. And when you could find them they were exorbitantly expensive. Insult to injury drivers were only available for NT. Not that it would be that terrible to set up an NT box for this purpose, but Linux of course would be much preferable.

So my question is, has this situation changed? Has the price of this technology become more available and affordable? Still prohibitively expensive? Any sourceforgian opensource driver alternative for the devices that are?

Re:Iris changes

[deadbadger]

Once you've got a decent image of the iris, these systems are really rather good. This one in particular uses algorithms developed by John Daugman from the Computing Lab at Cambridge, who claims all-but-perfect results for his algorithms. While he's chosen to commercially exploit his work rather than make it widely available (as well he might), his basic techniques have been re-implemented by other researchers who've obtained similarly astounding results. The list of results from his webpage is really quite spooky - technology shouldn't rightly work this well.

As I understand it, the main challenge now is to ensure the genuine nature of the image obtained. You can do this by simply watching people using the checker, thus preventing them from holding up detailed iris photos, or you can check more subtly. Some systems shine lights through your pupil to check for a live retina, but this is also avoidable if you cut a little hole in the iris photo and look through it. It's an interesting topic...

its called the base rate fallacy:

[phloydphreak]

This technology will never be applicable for identification from a database because of the base rate fallacy: i.e.

assuming that if a person is corretly identified 99.999% of the time. if there are 500M (roughly all of europe) people in the database, then the mistake rate would be approximately 500 ppl. So for every individual going through, there are 500 possible individuals which he could be. This is not even the full application of the base rate fallacy, there is not enough research published on iris recognition for it to be fully analized (this is a *very* rough estimate).

*this does make alot of sense for a passport comparator, b/c no one could then steal a passport and use it, unless they want to take the risk of prison on a single hand of poker: with only a royal flush being the way to win (roughly equivalent odds as getting through with some else's passport).

Which means that you can only be tracked IF:
The passport has a chip in it with your personal information upon it, and that information (after a verification of your iris) is sent to a data mining facility. No other means of tracking is possible.

-big brother is not watching you, he keeping your attention every moment of every day; making sure that you never think about anything except what he tells you to think. Making sure that you never feel anything that he doesnt tell you to feel.

So what good does it do?

[pilgrim23]

Black Hat gets on plane with faked ID and iris scan; knows the airport screener in Frankfurt is better then the one he left behind in Cyprus. Quick trip to the WC past the harried and underpaid seward, a quickly passed 500 Euro and.... Graft corruption, bribery greed these are the same as they always have been. All these security checks do is placate the cattle. The wolves still feast on the fringes of the herd and occasionally attack the middle. Menwhile, the sheepherd gently leads the rest of us towards the slaughterhouse...