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Have Your Fingerprints Read From 6 Meters Away
First time accepted submitter Burdell writes "A new startup has technology to read fingerprints from up to 6 meters away. IDair currently sells to the military, but they are beta testing it with a chain of 24-hour fitness centers that want to restrict sharing of access cards. IDair also wants to sell this to retail stores and credit card companies as a replacement for physical cards. Lee Tien from the EFF notes that the security of such fingerprint databases is a privacy concern."
Since the last time this technology was mentioned more than a year ago, it seems that the claimed range for reading has tripled, and the fingerprint reader business has been spun off from the company at which development started.
That won't be abused
So are we going back to the habit of wearing silk gloves all the time now? I wouldn't mind that.
If a gym, retail store, or credit card company ask for my finger prints, they will get told in no uncertain terms to politely go fsck themselves.
Not happening.
If you aint law enforcement, don't even bother asking.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Theres no way to hack, replicate or go around this fingerprint... o.O
I think we've just eliminated fingerprints as a viable identification method.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I don't think perfect identification, be it biometric, technological, or other, is in any way a good thing.
There are perfectly valid reasons for needing or wanting aliases, which are not associated with being a criminal.
Take for instance, employees of a collections agency. These are people who perform a distasteful, but still required service. Nobody really likes being called by a bill collector, nor do they like having to use one to get deadbeat clients to pay up. Deadbeats especially, despise bill collectors, and some are even belligerent enough to be a real physical threat to collection employees. This is why many collections agencies provide work aliases for call center staff, etc. If a foolproof means of identifying people is developed, these employees are at risk.
Then you have the quintessential witness protection program. These are people that have witnessed a violent or serious crime, and are now embroiled through no fault of their own in some serious shit. If Big Tony can perfectly identify them through his ring of heavies using foolproof tech, this program becomes effectively worthless.
and last, but certainly far from least, you have the serious problems with the Feds, and their "Papers Please!" abuses. History does a fine job of explaining, in graphic, nightmare inducing detail, exactly why perfectly being identifiable by government officials is bad bad juju.
People making startups, and companies offering products:
I understand that there is a very strong demand for this kind of technology. Please also understand exactly *why* there is a demand for this kind of technology, and what it opens the door to. Is landing a fat contract and making bank worth endangering people's lives, and being directly complicit in abuses of power that very well inevitably kill people really worth it?
I personally dont think it is.
This kind of technology, in the broad and general sense, is not a good thing. Please stop developing it.
Or just wear gloves.
Something you are. This is just one of three.
It's funny they talk about not being connected to major crime databases - your employer would have a local copy that would be used for building access. Sure right up until they passed it off as part of your background check they'll run on everyone now. All part of your 90 day probationary period!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Something got lost in translation, I guess...
Privacy is terrorism.
Now's a good a time as ever to start wearing gloves i guess.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
and make a pair of gloves
Second try of an old system... http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Cracking-your-Fingers.aspx
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
There are several problems with this technology most importantly how it will be used.
#1.) Cops will use it like minority report. WOOO we know where you are
#2.) This leads to number 2. Computers are not really used to perform fingerprint analysis. Yes, they can shorten the list but, in the end, its always a human who decides if its a "match"
#3.) There is no standard protocol for deciding if two fingerprints match. It is completely subjective. The IAI has flat out said they won't create a protocol because its not possible
#4.) There is no predictable margin of error. Frankly with no protocol and 100% subjective human interpretation, there is no way to quantify the probability of a match or more importantly, the margin of error.....heck, fingerprint analysts have been shown to make different identification to the same prints on different days and in different context.
#4) fingerprint analysis operates on the assumption that all fingerprints are unique (or unique within a reasonable margin of error). There has never been any evidence to support this assumption. Even the FBI with probably the worlds largest fingerprint database has never published any data suggesting finger prints are unique.
This all leads to the worst part. Law Enforcement will put this in an automated system to read our prints around town and assume its good enough to harass, arrest and convict citizens.
I don't like where this is going.
Dont get me wrong, its cool tech. Its just going to make a mess of things
...but was unsure how he felt, hence the one glove.
Hey, guys, scan this fingerprint. Yeah, the one on my middle finger, that's right.
After a little RTFA time, I don't think it's quite like the blurb makes it sound. The system can't scan dozens of people walking down a sidewalk (unlike the facial recognition technology used in most "free" countries today). The user has to actively wave at it to allow it to scan.
One concern the article raised is that it appears the prints are stored on the machine as an image (or perhaps a series of numbers describing the layout) rather than a cryptographically secure hash of the print. So if you steal the system, you get a bunch of free pictures of people's prints...and you probably get all of the prints on the hand, since they would likely scan every digit and compare it to the database. As prints become a more common means of identification, those boxes become as valuable as credit card and SSN databases. Although I'm sure the security of 24-hour Fitness and Target are second to none.
If someone needs to lift finger prints from a subject it has traditionally meant that someone needs to get him to touch something. With this, a guy can walk behind you, take a few pictures without ever touching you, and have your finger prints printed out in rubber.
Rather then giving us a better way to use finger prints... this means we have to go to retina scans.
There has to be a better way.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
whoooshhhhhhhh
It is a good thing. Right now we only have partial anonimity. I'm going to be threatened for the rest of my life for being a gimp and having problems with work. I have talked with the collectors and they do not help. In fact they ignore you and hide until you threaten legal action.
I lost my leg to cancer when I was 12. I had to stop school because of issues with my fake leg interfering with my concentration as well as making friends. But by then it was already too late.
I don't get any anonymity. In fact, when I hang myself from the threats, they are going to act like they had no clue what happnened. They already sent my homeless once. They took my medicaid away. They took my leg away. They want me to hang myself. With no way to fix my prostetic leg and no one wanting to take "responsibility" because of their bill collecting anonymity, it is obvious this is the end that the system wants.
The thought of hanging myself at my student loan organization doesn't bug me as much when I think it might make a differ
There has to be a better way.
Rectal Scans
Nobody will every buy it. Except for government, fingerprint security is largely dead dead dead.
First off, fingerprints can be replicated. Secondly, these types of optical systems have a (relatively) high failure rate (dust, smudges, adverse lighting conditions, etc). Next, they don't work with anyone under the age of 18 with reliability (the ridges and such vary considerably in size). Lastly - it freaks out the customers.
Anyone that thinks fingerprint security is going to succeed in the market is delusional at best. Been there, spent millions, done that. No matter how good the system is or how safe the fingerprints are it just isn't going to be good enough for anything other than a door lock.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Great! Now I have to wear gloves whenever I'm in public. And I though wrapping my RFID cards in aluminum foil was bad!!!
Hang on, what about the angular resolution of visible light at 6m, with indents in surely being 0.1mm? Can we get high enough resolution Is that even possible? How fast must the picture be taken to avoid blurring?
No, haven't RTFA. So sue me.
Let's compare it to similar technology like, I don't know, touch fingerprint readers that have a misread ratio of like 25%+. Considering that, there's this even more cutting edge new startup called any hardware store anywhere that lets you painlessly remove your fingerprints with proprietary technology known as sand paper. You'd look less suspicious than someone with gloves and it'd just come up as a misread or fail to read. Maybe 100 years from now you'd be a 1 in 1000 that gets a "OMG NO FINGERPRINTZ!" reading but not today.
The company's web site www.idairco only claims 1.5 meters.
There is no data on reliability of the read. No price. No model numbers. No ordering info.
I call shenanigans. This is a not-yet real product.
I'm quite happy with my finger prints saying about 3ft away in a rather handy position. They'd be a bit hard to control at twice the distance.
When I hear stories about people who've been arrested without any valid legal reason, I can't help but wonder "If that's illegal arrest, the cop can't - by definition - be acting in the legal duty of a police officer so it's pretty much a kidnap... what would SCOTUS say if someone would invoke their right to defend themselves and 2nd amendment against illegal arrest?". It sound like something that would - some time during the last few centuries - have occurred. So, what happened?
I wonder if the thing can read fingerprints through a pair of leathers... I THINK NOT!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Its just a camera. Anyone can do this anyway with a good enough camera. Its not really news until they can use real-time image recognition to scan peoples finger prints as they walk down the street, like they do with car number plates.
..and you give me my phonecall?
heh, heh...
Then there's the idea of wearing someone else's fingerprints on your fingers, like James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. How long after this long-range reading technology comes out before some enterprising criminal starts selling other people's fingerprints already built in to some sort of finger covers?
Seriously, this sort of thing should be made illegal - even for cops.
OTOH, it seems to me you'd have to approach someone from the rear because when most people walk, their hands are facing to the REAR or to their sides...So how do you get a decent scan from the front? Or at all, for that matter? Your fingers are usually cupped.
I suspect this technology will prove more than useless once really deployed in the field.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Just have a couple of IR-emitting LEDs on your person. The cameras get flooded, eyeballs can't tell the difference.
In some states (such as Virginia) it is a felony to hide your face in public (e.g. with a mask or a veil).
http://law.justia.com/codes/virginia/2006/toc1802000/18.2-422.html
I predict there will be a federal law soon, saying the same thing about IR lighting your face.
At least according to this recent frontline episode all most all forensic science is bunk
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/real-csi/
A password you cannot change but can read out 6 meters away without the victim knowing, isn't a good idea. Fingerprints are useless for security and this project simply proves that. You can do, at most, identification, but not authentication.