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3D Holograms Detect Fake Signatures
Roland Piquepaille writes "Several sources reported last week that a new technique that produces 3D holograms of handwriting could be used to detect fake signatures on checks, credit card receipts or other important handwritten documents. Here are pointers to Nature, Scientific American or BBC News Online. Instead of using 2D techniques to look at the sequence of pen strokes in a signature, this new method is based on 3D micro-profilometry which permits to translate the writing into an image showing dips and furrows of the sample so that anomalies can be detected. If you plan to imitate your spouse's signature, beware! Forensics have a new and very efficient tool. As an example, for the use of ballpoint pens on normal paper, the success rate was 100%. You'll find more details, references and pictures in this overview."
When I was at IBM yorktown Heights, the guy in the next lab over built a pen that had piezo acclerometers and pressure trnasducers built in. You got the time and pressure curves of the 2-d signature as it was signed. IBM never marketed it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So what if I use something else like a gel pen? I do use those to sign check, you know.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
So obviously we all press down to the same intensity and the curves of our writing remain the same all the time! Screw signatures off soon it will all be done with biometrics. thumb print obtained & verified you are who you say you are.
Exactly. Im young and still developing my signature and it changes slightly from time to time. what about me?
This is amazing, although I'm surprised by the fact that it isn't already in use *today*! Detectives already have known that when you write on paper, it creates a depression in paper. If you're writing on a note pad, for instance, and after you write your address on the sheet above of a bank holdup note, just lightly rubbing a pencil against the hold up note will reveal the address, the one written on the sheet above the bank holdup note, all because pressure created an indentation in the paper. Plus I do believe people sometimes check when they get rewards, certificates, etc.. to see if the signature is really hand-made, or printed, just by feeling the back for an indentation suggesting that someone was writing on the paper.
Ah, you found me!
What about the electronic signature pads in use at many stores, well, everywhere? I used to work at a 7-11, and I can tell you firsthand that the resolution *SUCKS* on these things. Nevermind that they don't take pressure readings. When we first got them my manager signed it with her real name, then "Micky Mouse". I couldn't tell the difference. It'd still be useful for things traditionally signed on paper (insurance policies, etc..), but as far as debit and credit transactions the majority (and a growing number of) of transactions will be unverifiable by this method.
E pluribus unum
From Joeseph Heller's divorce proceedings:
My wife's attorney presented a check and said, "Is this not your check?" "Yes it is." "Is this not a check to [Mrs. Heller] from you?" "Yes it is." "The is this not your signature?" "No it is not," I replied. "How can you say that, when the signature clearly reads 'Joseph Heller'," he asked loudly. "While I was bedridden, my friend Speed Vogel, an artist, learned to forge my signature since I was unable to lift a pen. Since this check was written during that time, I can only assume it was he, and not I, who wrote that alimony check."
and i can barely read my own signature!
seriously, i sign hundreds of documents every day. what happens when i can't replicate my own writing?
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
I sign my wife's name all the time, and she sometimes signs mine. All perfectly legal, as long as neither one disputes it.
Simply claim you have power of attorney from your spouse. If, when asked, your spouse says "yes, I gave my permission", you're clear.
Of course, you better be DAMN SURE your spouse is going to back you up.
"yes, he did. Same way he gave me permission to sign his name on the check buying the mink coat..."
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I actually ran into trouble with the bank recently when signing up for some extra insurance. Turned out they were comparing the signature to the one they had filed when I opened the account when I was 17, 9 years ago....suffice to say my sig had changed a bit over the years. This technology might have detected that my actual writing pattern is still pretty much the same though.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
a video of me performing the signature as well as paper samples
I remember watching some signature-detection algorithm on BBC (program was QED actually) a while back which involved a fine grid on which you sign with a touch-pen. The hardware was pretty standard, like the pad which the UPS delivery guy carries around. The algorithm recorded which pixel was toggled (pressed) at what time; it compared this time-delay information to a known good signature time sequence, adjusting for spatial and temporal offsets. And then of course it also did a standard pattern-match between the final signatures. The advantage was that it could easily detect your normal signature from a slowly forged one, even if the end results looked identical. As I recall, it did not give *any* false positives at all under the test runs, but it did reject your own signature a little too often for it to be used widely.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
The system is ancient but wide open to abuse. Several years ago a woman returned from holidays to discover that she had been married to her workmate. He had simply obtained all the paperwork, stamped it with his own seal and then having taken hers from her drawer, stamped it with her seal as well. The marriage was anulled, but the point is the personal seal is a little dangerous in my opinion.
Anyway, as a result, very few people I know in Japan has what I would call a signature, that is something that you write almost the same way each time. My own signature varies each time I write it an in fact has shrunk over the years, but always contains elements that appear to be hard wired into my hand and brain now. Even if I use a different grip, or even the wrong hand, the pattern is similar (thought obviously different). When my students try to sign something, they usually very neatly write their name in English.
Hell, whenever my dad goes on or off his Lithium it changes his signature enough that his bank won't cash checks that I take in...(he writes me checks for my birthday and Christmas, can't be bothered to actually shop, and has bounced enough checks to me that I feel better if I actually cash the check)
Most modern handwriting recognition techniques, such as on my Tablet PC, rely on knowing the order and direction of writing strokes to improve their accuracy. It looks like the techniques described by TFA's sources would provide similar information and might enable machines to finally transcribe handwritten papers reliably.
My new
I suffer from several severe forms of anxiety, performance anxiety being one of them. This includes the simple task of signing your name infront of someone in a bank or elsewhere. It is really aweful when you can't even feel comfortable signing your own name when in the presence of someone else.
My signature changes regularly as I seem to mess up or I can't seem to do it the same every time, it really is fustrating.
"Software is like sex... it's better when it's free"
As for myself, I share the sentiments of the original poster. My writing is so messy and signature so random, I don't think a system like that would work so hot for me. I guess I do have a few consistencies, like the elongated loops on my capital A and lower D's, the goofy squiggle that's supposed to be a capital W, and how I put a double stroke through my name when I dot the i and cross the capital A all in one fluid motion (thought it looked cool when I was little... now its just a part of my signature. Its funny when people asking me "why'd you cross your signature out? You just signed it!"
Oh well, at least with my mother working at my bank (branch manager no less), no one questions me on stuff like that.
Teller: "What the hell? Is that supposed to be your signature"
Me: "FIRED!!"
Not just that - the banks are now scanning the original checks and destroying the originals. So anyone with a Photoshop and an inkjet printer has a very good chance to commit a perfect crime, with all the evidence destroyed before the crime is even noticed...
Reminds me of the time a cow-orker of mine was locked out of the server room for a week because he cut his finger and couldn't use the fingerprint scanner while it healed. :)
I just RTFA (sorry) and had a thought - this technique could be adapted to a device that could read the information from an LP or an old wax cylinder without touching it.
This could make a recordings museum caretaker very happy. He could hear the recordings that are too fragile to play.
If there was a contact-free record player, I wouldn't feel like I should sell all my LPs.
I remember a story in Analog a few years ago about a man with the only recording of his father's voice on an old lacquer disk which had unfortunately broken. He ends up being able to listen to it due to a tech not unlike this.
A good story. Damn, I miss having the time to read those every month.
An affordable application of this for repairing a damaged record (not just applying filters) would certainly end up on my dock.
Where's Robin Hood? We could kinda really use him now.
My mom is an elementary school teacher. One year she had a, probably dyslexic, problem child.
By third grade she had somehow managed not to associate letters or numbers with any meaning or sound. She'd turn in a spelling test where not all the characters were even letters.
To cope, she had taught herself to copy from other students and was so eerily good at it you could tell from whom she had copied the assignment because she imitated their handwriting. She was really very good at reproducing the images but the meaning was completely beyond her.
Gotta love it when they mainstream kids who not only shouldn't be in the same league but shouldn't be playing the same game as the rest of the class.
The first time I went to the US, I was astounded to find store clerks swipe my card and then hand it right back to me before I sign the chitty!
My wife (American, now living in the UK) gets peeved that she can't go shopping with my credit card, because here, shop assistants are trained to CHECK the signature before letting you buy something......
What a novel idea.