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Have Your Fingerprints Read From 6 Meters Away

Posted by timothy on from the give-'em-the-finger-prints dept.

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.

8 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Absolutely not ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Absolutely not ... by kwiqsilver · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you aint law enforcement, don't even bother asking.

      s/law enforcment/law enforcement with a valid warrant/

    2. Re:Absolutely not ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why do they need to ask if they can read it from a distance?

    3. Re:Absolutely not ... by nedlohs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They don't need a warrant. They just need to arrest you. If you don't think they have a valid reason to arrest you and don't comply then resisting arrest becomes their reason.

      You can sue them later, but good luck with that and with getting those prints out of the system.

    4. Re:Absolutely not ... by nedlohs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because never in all of history has someone in America been arrested without good reason. And certainly no one has ever been charged with "resisting arrest" and nothing else.

      For example:
      http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13686438
      http://articles.philly.com/2010-06-29/news/24962922_1_wawa-officers-civilians

      And your word of caution. No it doesn't matter if you are right. If I shoot a cop who was trying to arrest me without valid cause, the fact that he didn't have a valid cause isn't going to stop the "large body of law enforcement officers out to cease my free movement". Just look at the cases of the non-knock warrant being served on the wrong house and the people inside doing what you say and getting shot because they dared defend themselves.

      For example:
      http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18328267/
      http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95475

  2. Right... by roc97007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...because there is no way criminal elements could abuse this technology...

    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.
    1. Re:Right... by roc97007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For many types of identity theft, often our only defense is that we're not worth impersonating.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  3. Fingerprints != valid method of identificaton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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