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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."
greasy, dirty or peeling skin on the finger can easily distort fingerprint-recognition, a factor that plays no role in the case of iris-recognition.
So, does this mean that folks with melanomas of the iris, cataracts, macular degeneration (which is common and can manifest initially through pigment changes in the iris), etc... will have to go through a bigger hassle than the other passengers when traveling?
Also, since the iris does change throughout life, I would guess that one would have to renew their iris scan on their passport from time to time.
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I'd start checking ebay for tinfoil lenses then.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
...who is this "Iris?" Was she clothed when she was scanned and, most importantly is she seeing anyone?
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
Honestly, this technology is scary.
I think that has probably been said by someone about pretty much every technology we use today. It isn't the technology that's scary, it's what people might do with it. Almost every new technology has the potential for good, as well as evil.
You probably shouldn't click this.
At least they aren't Frankfurt scanning.
My dad always thought that the best security meassure for these iris scans would be some sort of icepick-like tip that pokes you hard in the eye if the scan fails.
Excuse me, just because something the german's do is something you don't agree with you call them Nazi's? EXCUSE ME?
Right now our own [US] government is a lot more like the Dritten Reich than the current german government.
As far as many europeans I know this doesn't bother them, because it's not more invasive than many other things that happen over there.
Be careful about throwing around the "Nazi" term - it may offend some of us around for many reasons, especially when it's inappropraitely and racistly used like you just did.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Germans collecting bilogical data about everyone who comes through their borders...what could go wrong?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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...
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
This is rather invasive and doesn't bode well for privacy. Not to mention the issues of being able to get the same scan every time (eye damage, anyone?). On the other hand, it does make an attempt to solve the authentication problem -- how do you know that the person holding the passport is the person the password was issued to? Take a sample of data points from the scan at the time of application which are guaranteed to be reproducible (the signature) and sign it against a government-held private key. Barring changes in the eye structure, this should be easily reproducible.
Still, all these methods do nothing to prevent terrorism. They only validate that the person shoving their eye into the reader, terrorist or innocent, matches with the passport. Done properly, it should be incredibly difficult to forge a passport without having someone high up on the inside with access to the private encryption key. But it won't stop terrorists.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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.
...start using operatives who have no eyes. And then what will we do?
With each new device or method used in airports to catch or filter out terrorists, the barrier to commit terrorist acts is raised higher. What do you think will happen when it becomes virtually impossible to do anything even remotely odd near or inside airports and airplanes? well I'll tell you : terrorists will fall back on easier targets, chiefly trains. And then, once a train has been derailled, every government will start applying airport police-state methods to railway stations and trains, and so on ...
It's an endless battle. If countries carries on trying to defend themselves like they do now (mostly in the US, but also in other countries), they'll all turn into huge menacing police states. and terrorists will have won. If those countries don't defend themselves, terrorists will blow things up forever and will have won again.
What the world really needs is a true force of education in dangerous countries, a project that spans over 2 or 3 generations. The US is in Afghanistan and Iraq, why don't they set up schools to teach the current generation of kids there not to hate, and why terrorism is bad? They're not doing jack squat, and neither are any other countries concerned by terrorist threats. Instead of starting to implement that long-term, but only real solution to the terrorist problem, they barricade themselves and make life miserable for their own populations.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I actually worked with Iridian back when they were called "Iriscan" a few years ago. The technology was pretty cool; unlike fingerprint or voiceprints, which can only verify someone's identity after they tell you (via a username, prox card, etc) who they are, an iris scan can actually identify a user based off of their iris pattern.
A typical fingerprint has about 10 points that can be uniquely identified, and on a thumbprint scanner you're lucky to get 5 or 6 of them reliably. The iris has roughly 26 unique points that can be picked up every time. Back when I was working with Iridian's stuff they used a low light video camera to basically take a picture of your eye...no funky lasers or anything like that. Additionally, and perhaps morbidly so, they had built technology to help identify if the eye was live or not, so not only could you not just hold up a picture of an eye, but you couldn't take someone else's eye (a la Demolition Man, I believe) and hold it up to the scanner.
Additionally, the iris pattern (and thumbprint or voiceprint in other applications) is never held as an actual pattern; it's just a hash based off of what comes off the scanner, so privacy was not much of a concern.
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?
"I fear a bleak future run along the lines of Minority Report's eye scanning. Honestly, this technology is scary."
I don't. Hollywood's been predicting that the world will rot for decades. Instead, it slowly gets better and better.
Technology can be dangerous if it is absorbed too quickly. There's no time for thought and adjustment. However, we have a very big population, and that means technology is very slow to be adopted, and by then proper precautions are usually taken.
It's also worth noting that nearly everything people imagine happening that would be real 'bad' has large problems with practicality. The benefit has to outweigh the practicality, and nearly everything that people are afraid of fails that test in one form or another. Somebody told me once that they were afraid that if electronic identification got too out of control, the gov't would watch what everybody's doing. You could get stopped from boarding an airplane because you were at a Muslim church earlier that day. (Note: That's what he told me, that's not my own idea there.) Everybody worries that it'll be the case, but nobody thinks abou twhat it'd take to do that. Besides requiring a massive computer network and central data archive to store all this information, a computer has to go in and do the analysis on it. Hello?! There are 300 million people in this country. We're a long ways away from having that data available. Then there's the whole matter of false positives. Make it too sensitive, and you'll have a lot of people chasing false leads indefinitely. The only way it would practically work is if it looked for VERY strong stuff. Even then, you still have to have a human review it and make a judgement call. The United States Gov't would have to front a LOT of expense and co-ordinate a massive effort to do what people are afraid of, and the benefit is... What? Total control? Our gov't isn't after that. It's too hard to acquire, too hard to maintain. On top of all that, even those in power find themselves in a not so lovely position. I'm sure Mr. Adolf had a terrible time knowing who his friends were.
It's not that I'm trying to be dismissive here, I'm just not sold on the idea that it's all that scary. I am quite happy to support the right checks and balances, however. If we were talking about electronic law enforcement (as opposed to electronic flagging, which is what this technology is about) you'd be having an entirely different conversation with me.
"Derp de derp."
In France and Belgium, for example, you can walk into a police station and declare you have lost your passports (the prevalence of muggers and pickpockets makes it an easily believable story). You have to provide a birth certificate. What is it? An ordinary piece of paper, incredibly easy to counterfeit. Once your ID has been "established" by this "proof", the authorities will issue a new set of ID documents: forgery-proof ID and biometric passport. With your supplied name and photo on it.
If at least, they keep a database of iris scans, forgers would be able to do it only once. The article doesn't say anything about such a database.
So this is a nice strong link in the othewise very weak security chain in Europe.
--
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"Hollywood's been predicting that the world will rot for decades. Instead, it slowly gets better and better."
...please?
Can I come and live in your world?
As it seems, most of you might have missed the fact, that the system is optional. You don't have to use it, you don't have to own a special passport if you don't want to use it.
It's setup as a convenience for frequent travellers. Its opt-in, if you would like to call it that way.
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.
"this is the gloaming"
radiohead
I have this thing, more than a thing, really; more of a screaming, frothing refusal to submit to fingerprinting, retinal scanning, DNA sampling, gait analysis, random drug testing, ID picture taking... I don't think I should have to unless I am arrested and accused of a crime (and I better see a judge and a lawyer, too -- no torture pit in Syria, please).
I understand that pasports are necessary, and I would submit to good old picture ID, of course. Seems to have worked for a very long time. I do detest having to state various things about my private life (are you married? divorced? where's your wife? A: why the hell is that your business?).
The 40 or so hijackers that crashed the jets were here on perfectly valid ID's. No biometric scanning would have made a difference.
So, why are we submitting to this crap? And do you think that the powerful in the U.S. will be ducking their heads into retinal readers when they travel? Do you think the Saudi royals will?
Do you think they will stop at retinas? DNA will follow. Then RFID tags to track us. All in the name of Safety. Although none of these things will stop criminals from blowing something up. They merely have to keep their noses clean until they attack.
Now, I know that I am unemployable in corporate America now and forever, for they operate in some realm other than constitutional democracy. I don't grant them the right to make me pee on command, or track my private life (they can fire you for going to a union organizing meeting on your own time -- ruling was upheld).
But this -- I'm not going to guess, I am going to state that very soon I am locked out of Europe. And if the U.S. follows the EU's lead, I won't be able to leave the United States because I would refuse to have my biometric data taken for a passport?
I'm never able to travel out of the U.S. unless I submit. They won't let me leave.
I'm in prison. We all are.
the U.S. is far less likely to repeat slavery (or Native American genocide), than Germany is to oppress its Turkish or other minorities
I think entirely the opposite is true - due precisely to their country's history, the German people are far less likely to oppress or otherwhise mistreat ethnic minorities than other countries (i.e. the US).
Germans suffer greatly under an (often subconscious) apprehension over how they appear to be treating other cultures. Germany is much more likely than most countries to be scrutinised for it's actions concerning minorities, for as soon it makes a controvesial move there will instantly be cries about how it is reverting to form. Austria elects a right-wing government and no-one blinks an eye, Germany has the world's eye upon them and thus adopts a far less forceful approach in it's international relations.
To be frank, Germans have a much more tolerant and open-minded view towards foreigners than most Americans - and I've never heard anyone refer to the Gastarbeiter as "Germany's Niggers". The comparison is apt only in the sense that both groups are one of largest minorities in their respective countries - at least virtually all african-americans speak English. This is getting off topic, but the problem with the Turkish peoples in Germany lies in equal parts with them and us. Some have a tendency to form enclaves and refuse to assimilate or even learn German. When you walk down streets where every shop sign is both in German and Turkish (except for the pub/social club, which is just in Turkish), all the kids on the street are Turks, and nary a word of German is spoken between the teenagers on street corners, you wonder whether the Regierung (Government) might not have a case for denying citizenships to those who aren't making an effort to become part of the German community.
Unlike in 1935, the German government of today (for all their flaws) makes plenty of effort to try and integrate the immigrants currently living here into mainstream society. Stronger border controls just mean they can focus on the problem at hand, rather than having a growing pool of people who have to be adressed.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.