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Japan To Begin Testing Fingerprints As 'Currency' (the-japan-news.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from The Japan News: Starting this summer, the government will test a system in which foreign tourists will be able to verify their identities and buy things at stores using only their fingerprints. The government hopes to increase the number of foreign tourists by using the system to prevent crime and relieve users from the necessity of carrying cash or credit cards. It aims to realize the system by the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. The experiment will have inbound tourists register their fingerprints and other data, such as credit card information, at airports and elsewhere. Tourists would then be able to conduct tax exemption procedures and make purchases after verifying their identities by placing two fingers on special devices installed at stores. The Inns and Hotels Law requires foreign tourists to show their passports when they check into ryokan inns or hotels. The government plans to substitute fingerprint authentication for that requirement.
They're using them as an identifier to connect with your actual currency.
Speak for yourself.
You leave them literally everywhere.
Why not optical retina scans?
But this still leave the problem that every reader must be trusted. We know from ATM machines, this is not the case, and once that biometric data is stolen... you can't change it unlike a password.
I envision a lot of suck in the future.
use a passport...
Just so you know
is the certainty with which I presume anything digital will eventually be stolen if it matters enough to someone else.
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Great idea, zero potential for / certainty of abuse! And so secure! Tricking a fingerprint reader requires special advanced technology.
i first read this as "Japan to begin testing fingers as currency".
then i thought "what about all the Yakuza who have lost fingers?"
then i realized "they'll have to use someone else's fingers."
Nice idea, but news bulletin to Japanese government: Crime is already nonexistent in Japan compared to every other destination for foreign visitors, and ease of payment isn't what's keeping people from visiting.
How about you make the country more affordable to visit instead?
Dateline: Tokyo, April, 2016
Today, the US embassy issued a travel warning for Japan. When this reporter asked US ambassador Mumblechops for comment on this, he told me that the number of fingerless tourists returning to the US had crossed an unacceptable threshold. "They can't even hold the panties from the panty vending machines" he said indignantly.
My interview was cut short as the ambassador was called away to a meeting; I caught the phonetics "Love Hotel", an acronym I am unfamiliar with, but which no doubt designates a weighty matter of US national security.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Digital. Finger. Heh. Yeah, they can easily be forged, forced, or stolen (yes, the bad guys WILL lop off digits in Japan. It's a thing.). Anyone with graphite powder and a piece of cellophane tape can get your credentials. Bad idea. Add if you're compromised, you can't change it.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
.. so that you can be sure that, when you are attacked or being robbed, the will cut off your finger. Great. Another reason to avoid Japan and its animals.
Having only foreign tourists beta test it ensures the Japanese people are not at risk, which should tell you the confidence they have in the system.
Let's see. Give my fingerprint, financial info and positive identification information to a foreign government. What could possibly go wrong?
10 to 1 odds this is backed by the NSA.
This is like leaving my bank PIN number and bank card on everything that I touch. Do. Not. Want.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
to Japan this summer. This makes me want to pull the plug.
1) Government is finger printing all visitors... so visitors are all criminals. Finger printer will never go away.
2) All transactions are being handle the government.. Tracking all visitors. Logs again will not go away.
MANY years ago, thought of similar idea for Caribbean country/island, so you can buy an all inclusive stay to the country, not just a single hotel/resort. One of the ideas was tourist is lost, walks into a restaurant and swipes his "island" card. he would get direction is his language to where he is going (hotel, point of interest) and voucher for the taxi ride to it, also paid for ticket to get in if need. All was using the simple ZonLR card machines. The hotels (mostly 3-6 room motels, but on beech front. would get a full function hotel system (think cloud today) on that same simple ZonJR. So the Dept of Tourism would adverse the package and all the little restaurants and hotels would get more business. It would start before you cleared customs, so you have directions, travel vouchers and the ID card to allow you full access.
Also help start a loyalty program in a few hotel chains, too.
So yes, I am hypocrite, or I have come to my senses. Your choice.
Excellent idea. Perhaps someone can quickly describe how to revoke a compromised identity when it's based on your fingerprint.
And once my fingerprints are compromised, then what?
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these poor folks?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Sorry, but "ease of payment" isn't why people don't come to Japan. It's not like paying is any different or more difficult than anywhere else. It's not even the price. It's your damn xenophobia. Teach your people some manners and we'll talk about visiting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As Bruce Schneier noted, Biometrics not a panecea...
One more problem with biometrics: they don't fail well. Passwords can be changed, but if someone copies your thumbprint, you're out of luck: you can't update your thumb. Passwords can be backed up, but if you alter your thumbprint in an accident, you're stuck.
There are techniques by which fingerprints can be faked.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
But since finger print scanners are notoriously easy to fool I can see how it'd be worse. Chip+Pin or chip+sig is your best bet to stop electronic fraud.
Now, Japan is well known for preferring cash to plastic but then if you're going to get a business to buy into this complicated scheme and run a fingerprint scanner Point of Sale wouldn't they be just as likely to take cards? And if they don't I'm stuck with cash anyway.
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http://www.phonearena.com/news...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
The big flaw in their plan is that biometrics are not secret and cannot be changed. If you are tracking people who do not want to be tracked, like prisoners, criminal suspects or parolees these are really good attributes. The endpoints also have to be trusted clients, which is also a tricky to enforce security model. If someone can steal or reverse engineer a trusted terminal it will lead to uncontrollable fraud.
It's a bit like having everyone pay with their SSN if your SSN was irremovably tattooed on your wrist.
Thanks to some idiots at the US govt, a lot of US employee and contractor fingerprint data is already out there, part of that large govt hack a while ago. There's no way anyone in that position would link their fingerprints to monetary access!
Invisible, everywhere!
Japan is one of the few countries where you could accidentally drop a wallet full of cash and have one of the following happen to you:
1. Go back and find the wallet still on the floor cash intact.
2. Have someone run after you and give you your wallet cash intact.
3. Go to the local police station and get given your wallet cash intact.
There's a lot of things that come to mind when I think of Japan but crime is definitely at the very bottom of that list.
Biometric passport just means that the visible photo is also stored on there as a .jpg
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
>using the system to prevent crime
This will be a total failure.
You prevent crime by executing criminals. Not by being so afraid of them you don't want to carry money with you.
Continue in this direction and enjoy your death, Japan.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
If they make it required, I guess I will never visit Japan. Fingerprints should not be used for biometrics. Period.
Using fingerprints and allowing a third-party to have access to that data is unacceptable. Not only because the government should have no need to track what people are doing but because the gov should not have fingerprint registration data (which will be horribly abused) . Every time a national database is searched, if your data is in there, you are being searched without probable cause.
Stand up for your rights, people... and the rights of your children. Once you give this data to the government (or big business), it will NEVER be erased or restricted, regardless of claims or laws- it will go into huge databases and shared between all agencies and used however they want for as long as they want.
There is only one safer and practical biometric I know of- that is deep vein palm scan. That registration data cannot be readily abused. It can't be latently collected like DNA, fingerprints, and face recognition can. You have to know you are registering/enrolling when it happens. You don't leave evidence of it all over the place. When you go to use it, you know you are using it every time. And on top of all that, it is accurate, fast, reliable, unchanging, live-sensing, and cheap. If you must participate in a biometric, this is the one you should insist on using.
Example: http://www.m2sys.com/palm-vein...
But we also need to realize that IT IS NOT EVERYONE'S BUSINESS WHAT WE ALL DO. The first step in securing freedom is privacy. When you are tracked, you are losing your freedom, whether you realize it or not.
1) common condition as people age is loss of fingerprints
2) very easy to spoof - various techniques to both record and then make a plastic overlay
3) worst case fingers can be detached from person
All forms of biometric Id suffer from above to greater or lesser extent. They make great form of Id but any form of authentication ultimately needs some additional data in head
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get.google.com/handsfree tldr; Google uses a suite of information to determine who is making a purchase without the purchaser having to do anything other than atmost giving their initials.
> Why not optical retina scans?
Greetings, Warden Smithers!
The good side of this is that more and more cyber criminals will flock to Japan and Japanese gov websites for one stop shopping: credit card and personal data for vacationing owners all in one place. So our data elsewhere in the world will be safer.