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Ears Might Be Better Than Fingerprints For ID
An anonymous reader writes "A new study says that outer ear could be better unique identification mark in human beings than finger prints. 'When you're born your ear is fully formed. The lobe descends a little, but overall it stays the same. It's a great way to identify people,' said Mark Nixon, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton and leader of the research. Nixon and his team presented a paper at the IEEE Fourth International Conference on Biometrics and using an algorithm identified people with 99.6 per cent accuracy."
An anonymous reader adds a link to Wired's story on the same conference presentation, which adds this skeptical note: "'I have seen no scientific proof that the ear doesn’t change significantly over time. People tend to believe notions like these, and they are repeated over time,' said Anil Jain, a computer scientist at Michigan State University who was not involved in the study. 'Fingerprinting has a history of 100 years showing that it works, unless you destroy your fingerprints or work in an industry that gives you calluses.'"
Yeah but how often do you leave earprints at the scene of a crime?
There is no easy way to hide your ear, and those prints get everywhere.
So I guess the Ferengi have made first contact with us poor terrans and have begun influencing our culture...
I mean no biometric ID is ever likely to be 100%. What you are just changes over time so even if we could measure it perfectly, there has to be fudge factor built in. Then there are situations like wins and so on.
However, that's ok, it doesn't need to be perfect. Biometrics shouldn't be security on its own, it should be in tandem with a passcode and/or a key or the like. The idea isn't that any of it is perfect, of course not, just that trying to successfully break more than one is really hard. Like if a door just has a passcode, well then what someone has to do is find out a legit passcode and use it. Not too hard in theory at least. However if that passcode is tied to a fingerprint, well then that is a problem. Even if it is only 99% accurate that means you have to find the 1 person in 100 that will work with that particular passcode. That is near impossible.
The big problem with biometrics at this point doesn't really seem to be accuracy but spoofing. Now that isn't as large a problem as it may seem since it isn't like getting a fingerprint from someone and making a replica is the easiest thing in the world, but it is a much bigger problem than accuracy. So unless this method is much harder to spoof, I don't really see how it matters that much.
Genitalia Biometrics. TSA would be hitting two birds with one stone. Once they make sure there are no bombs around your pecker (or peckette), they match your pecker against a database of peckerheads. Genitalia are not known to change over time (except my wife's), so they would probably need an If IsWife() { RaiseToleranceThreshold(); }; to prevent false positives (but not HIV positives, still need condoms for that).
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
If you want to identify a user for a locked system, is an ear going to be harder to fake than a fingerprint?
If you want to identify the perpetrator of a break-in, is an ear likely to be an identifiable leave-behind?
I don't understand who they are proposing would find significant advantage to this.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Have you ever seen people with jewelry that stretches their ears in a significant ways? What about wrestlers? Some of these peoples ears bare little resemblance to what they did when born. Now granted people can burn their finger tips and do all kinds of other crap as well, but this kind of mutilation is usually intentional as compared to the examples above (yes... I know people can lose fingers to a saw too...)
The martial arts crowd would be pretty immune to unique profiles, their ears develop pretty homogeneously with their career.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
> unless you destroy your fingerprints
Having inadvertantly taken my fingerprints off one hand at one point (yes, it was VERY painful, thank you), and found (as many others have) that they grow back... can you actually damage them so bad/repeatedly they don't grow back, and still have things like, erm, fingertips?
why Vincent cut his ear off, he was trying to escape detection ....... :-)
No more earmarks!
Especially the earlobe...I guess if you're not too concerned about the earlobe the rest of the ear might not change much.
It's going to take a really large ink pad to take ear prints.
"Fingerprinting has a history of 100 years showing that it works."
Fingerprinting has a history of well over 100 years, but what we see is that it works as long as it is not seriously challenged. In its only major rigorous challenge, the 50Kx50k text, substantial problems emerged.
Keep in mind that fingerprints are never admitted into evidence, never used for identification, never even examined. Never. A finger touches a surface and it leaves a partial copy. An investigator finds it and puts powder (matrix) on it, which creates a visible picture of the copy. It is often not possible to get a good photo of the copy, so someone uses tape or other gear to get an image of the picture of the copy. Then someone photographs the tape containing the image of the picture of the copy. Then a print of the photograph of the tape of the image of the picture of the copy is created. If there are no more steps, which would be unusual, that print is what is actually used for evidence or analysis. Scientifically-minded readers will have already tallied up at least a partial list of the errors introduced at each step of the process.
And what sort of analysis is done? The best lab in the country, the FBI, uses an analysis process taught by a high school grad who washed out of college after two years. Obviously, other labs do not enjoy such high standards. What standards do they use, you may ask? None. There are no required national standards for fingerprint analysts. There are guidelines that suggest that a high school diploma should be required, but the advisory guidelines bind no one.
But at least they use a rigorous process with well-defined standards?
"The International Association for Identification assembled in its 58th annual conference... based on a three-year study by its Standardization Committee, hereby states that no valid basis exists at this time for requiring that a predetermined minimum of friction ridge [fingerprint] characteristcs must be present in two impressions in order to establish positive identification."
So no, there are no standards, which is a good thing because the relevant international body has determined that there is "no valid basis" for establishing one.
So now they say that they can get better results by looking at someone's ears? Hm... Well, the good news is that they're probably right. The bad news is that they've got a long way to go before they can say that it's any great accomplishment.
This is not for identifying prints at crime scenes. Rather, for IDing all those gazillions of terrorist folks who waltz into the US as tourists every day. So add pictures of your ears to the thumbprints and facial photos that are taken when you go through customs.
"I'm sorry, sir, but we cannot take a picture of your ears in this condition. Here's a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a box of Q-tips. Please clean them up, before we can let you into the "Land of the Free" . . . of ear wax.
"Um, sorry to bother you, chief, but this foreign chick is wearing Groucho Glasses and fake plastic ears. Should I just take a picture of her like that, or should she remove the stuff first? I was concerned that if she committed a terrorist crime, she would probably be wearing the Groucho Glasses . . . and the ears."
identified people with 99.6 per cent accuracy
It must kinda sorta suck being in that 00.4 per cent:
"Mom! You said that grandma and grandpa came from Scotland. But the TSA says that my ears indicate heritage from folks from the Fertile Crescent . . . "
The next phase will be fractal analysis of pictures of dicks and labia . . . they're always just a wee bit different on every person.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I swear.....Van Gogh......what do you mean I cant enter because the scan failed
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
Some men's ears elongate tremendously as they age. An earlobe crease can develop indicating cardiac problems. Killer Kowalski bit off Yukon Eric's ear during a Canadian wrestling match. Your witness.
Mod Me Up. You'll make a grown man cry.
I'm all ears to the progress that could happen in this area
The French police officer, Alphonse Bertillon (April 24, 1853 - February 13, 1914) was a biometrics researcher who created anthropometry, an identification system based on physical measurements. Anthropometry was the first scientific system used by police to identify criminals.
?This was eventually supplanted by fingerprinting, because os inconsistancies in measurement. Using computer- or video-based measurements should help standardize measurements and increase statistical accuracy. Wikipedia article on Bertillion: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alphonse_Bertillon
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
The problem with this kind of ID is it's ear today, and gone tomorrow.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Back in the early 90's I had a friend who showed me his Federal ID, they had a front and profile photo and made him hold his hair back to expose his ear for the profile shot. He explained that they used the earlobe as an identifying feature since each person's was unique and was a practice they got from the Nazis. So reading this now, almost 20 years later leaves me scratching my head at what seems to be very very very old news. Of course, I did not read the article, and wouldn't be surprised if it were repeat from the 40's
Ears may be good for passive video identification. Before long, I might have to start modifying my ears with clay in order to get through airport security.
I was born with ears that stuck out worse that Prince Charles. I was teased about them all through school.
In college I had my ears "tucked," which basically made them lay flat against my head. I had generous grandparents.
Anyway, the point is that to do this, (the following not for the queasy), they slice open your ear, take out the cartilage (which is what forms all the unique bumps and curves of your ear), manually reshape it, stick it back in, and then sew you up.
Not only did my ears finally not stick out, but they looked totally different than they did before: none of the curves matched, and even my earlobes are a different shape (the bottoms are trimmed a bit and then stitched back to your head.)
This is not terribly expensive surgery, and while a bit painful, if I were a criminal trying to beat a set of "earprints" somehow left at the scene of a crime, I'd have it done in a second.
Hello Mr. PlasticSugeonGuy, Please make my ears look like this photo here. Great, thanks goodbye now. Runs over to bank, yeeess I would like to withdraw 6 million from my savings account. Certainly sir, let me scan your ear first. Ok the ear cheques out, here is your money.
Good point, but check your math - 900,000,000 *0.4% = 3,600,000. Same conclusion, though.
You can alter the form of the ear surgically, even so that it matches another person's ear. But you can't fake another person's fingerprint that way, even altering the fingerprint surgically so that it still looks natural afterwards is impossible today.
What, so now I'll have to lean over and drag my EAR across that infernal thing on my laptop?
What you described is the classic difference between sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV). Sensitivity is a basic characteristic of a test, in this case 99.6% (Actually the TFA mentioned accuracy, which is a bit different, but let's not nitpick). PPV tells us what is the chance that a positive result (in this case, an ear match), is a true positive. Since the equation is TP/(TP+FP) (TP True positive; FP - False positive), it is affected by how common (or rare) the trait we are looking for is in the population we are checking. Since a terrorist is a rare occurrance, the PPV is (very) low.
However, if we change the test a bit we can improve the PPV. Let's say we do not use the ears as a single test, but rather as a verification for the ID. A person shows a passport and then his ears are compared to what is stored at the computer. Here the test is used just for verification and not identification and we have a much better PPV (In this case a positive is actually a mismatch between the passport and ears) and the system can be used to detect people with fake IDs.
BTW, this is used in many places where fingerprints are used. I don't know about other countries, but in Israel citizens can register their fingerprints and bypass passport control by going to a booth where you pass a magnetic card (containing your ID) and then you put your fingerprints for verification.
So is 99.6% good enough? depending on the application. Oh, does anyone know what is the accuracy of fingerprint recognition devices?
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
Consider checking airplane passengers against a no-fly terrorist ear list: ~900,000,000 passengers/year x 0.4 error rate = ~36,000,000 false positives/year. Totally useless
You could have stopped at "Totally useless".
No fly lists are a joke.
If a passenger passes all the screening and has no weapons, and there are no more than one of them on the flight then let them fly.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
My youngest daughter had pointed ears when she was born (as in Elf/Spock pointy). That went away over a few months. There's still the slightest suggestion of it (she is seven, now), but it definitely did change from what she was born with.
You can have my potatoe when you pry it from my colde deade handes.
Infuriate left and right
Without reading TFA, is that even a good accuracy? I always assumed that fingerprint accuracy is better than that. Having 0.4% error rate means that it is only good for identifying customers in commercial surveys. Any security mechanism will need better than that.
how often do you leave earprints at the scene of a crime?
You know the joke of the blonde with a burned ear? The phone rang when she was ironing her clothes.
There is going to be a windfall for makers of Spock Ears.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I'm a full time bass player (I play with my fingers, no pick) and my callouses are pretty impressive. Every once and a while I'll get a blister under them and have to bite em off. They're about an 1/8th inch thick and I can see my finger prints just fine. Not sure what the summary is referring to.
An MMA figher? A wrestler? A rugby forward?
But your units don't check. It is 900,000,000 * .004.
This idea of identifying criminals by biometric measurements like facial features goes back to the 19th century; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Bertillon .
Revive the Constitution.
ears are also easier to forge - all you need is a video feed to get the shape info you need, as compared to lifting off fingerprints...
The problem is that nobody has but a single identity. You're a different person when you grow up, with your parents, with siblings if any, with friends, with school mates, with house mates, with colleagues, and it varies with every gig and every place and over time. So what is it we call "identity". It's a legal fiction. A useful fiction if you're into administration, but it no more exists than does a corporation. That too is a figment of the laws.
The term "identity" as it is used with respect to means-of-identification means your body inclusive of all changes from birth to death, not your personality.
Along with your body comes a lot of other things, including presumed responsibility for the acts of the person (mind, spirit, personality, whatever) that is controlling that body. If I commit murder at age 20 and claim at age 25 that I'm a different person now, the burden of proof is on me. On the other hand if a murder is committed 5 years ago and an eyewitness picks me out of a lineup and I claim my identical twin Skippy did it, then I can claim I didn't do it with some credibility, at least until Skippy makes the same claim or is ruled out as a suspect.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
When my father was alive we commented on how similar our ears were, right down to the same congenital ripples on the upper edges of our respective right ears. When he died, I inherited his custom-fitted hearing aids, and although I have no need for them, (yet), I put them into my ears just for a lark. They fit me PERFECTLY - no gap, no looseness, no discomfort, and no visible gaps or aberrations in shape.
So maybe ears aren't as close to being unique as has been suggested.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
but then our error rate is made up of the sum of false positives and negatives...
now of course there are less terrorists than innocents out there, but you would expect that 3,600,000 to include some false negatives as well.
1) Quayle was ridiculed for changing the correct spelling (potato) from a five year old to "potatoe" and was lampooned by every comedian in the US for it. He was the first loser of "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?"
2) He was never known to spell cold with an "E", although it does match the spelling of "potatoe"
3) "Potatoe" and "Colde" would make sense in a "spelling rules" thing; most words with a long vowel at the end sylable end in "e" to show it's a long vowel; potato and cold are two exceptions. "Deade" makes no sense at all, as neither the e or (silent) a are long vowels.
I'm surprised I remember all this crap. Second grade was half a century ago.
Free Martian Whores!
Yeah but how often do you grab your earlobe in a fit of anxiety and pull it down, thereby stretching it beyond its length and changing it over a few years to be longer then it should, also, what about those piercings that make huge holes, that does not seem to keep its original form!!!