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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.
is the certainty with which I presume anything digital will eventually be stolen if it matters enough to someone else.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Great idea, zero potential for / certainty of abuse! And so secure! Tricking a fingerprint reader requires special advanced technology.
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.
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.
Wow... and there's nothing worse than having to reheat a dead finger for the third time on your dash with the defroster.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
This is like leaving my bank PIN number and bank card on everything that I touch. Do. Not. Want.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Yeah, because heat is so very hard to come by.
The IQs around here are dropping so fast it's practically palpable.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Excellent idea. Perhaps someone can quickly describe how to revoke a compromised identity when it's based on your fingerprint.
Maybe it's due to the lack of heat?
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.
I've spent about four months total in Japan, mostly in Osaka but some day trips out to the boonies. The Japanese people I encountered were almost universally polite and helpful. I got quite a few free drinks and even a free dinner from people who wanted to practice English.
Yes, there was one drunk guy unhappy to see a white guy on his street and yelled at me, one cashier who ignored me and one older guy who didn't want to sit next to me on a train. Meh. More than balanced out by the woman who all but took me by the hand to help me find the temple I was looking for when I got lost in her little town.
I see more rudeness from fellow Americans in a week here than I'd see in a month from how Japanese folks treat Americans. I'd go back in a heartbeat, and hope to do so someday.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
What are you smoking? Go to the US and you get fingerprinted. Christ I went to Universal Studios back in 2008 and they wanted your finger print at the gate to go with your ticket.
Japan has zero crime and there is no requirement to use this system. If you are really worried about the govt tracking your daughters purchases get her to pull cash out of an ATM (useful tip 711s ATMs accept foreign cards not all others do) then buy a Pasmo or Suica card in any one of a zillion train stations and load it up with the cash. That card can be used just about everywhere in tokyo. The rest of the time use the cash. Of course if she bends the card or loses it monies gone. But it's anonymous right!?!?
Your daughter going to Japan would be a really good thing for her. She will get to see another highly developed country that has almost nothing in common with the US. She will get to see a totally different way of doing things and hopefully she will come back more well rounded for it.
Have you been there?
I've been there 5 times in the last 10 years. The people are LOVELY. I've had custom dinners cooked for me at bars. People driving me places then refusing any kind of payment. I've had someone come running after me to give me a bag I had left on the train. I've had a taxi driver say follow me when I was lost while driving and then refuse to let me pay the meter.
Every shop you walk into you are greeted by the staff. And I have been all over the country. From Hiroshima to Sapporo.
You could learn something from them. Perhaps if you just sat back and looked and tried to understand you might realise the country is very different to what you described. Yes she can learn about a country that promotes the group over the individual. But why is that inherently bad? It is the antithesis of the American mindset but it isn't inherently wrong. She can learn about a country that has almost no crime, no crime because society comes first.
As for the patriarchal aspects of their society there are some valid points to that but it is nowhere near the place it was 20 years ago. The marriage by 30 thing is basically gone. Women are consistently holding more and more career positions and the servant to the husband attitude has died. If anything Japan is having issues because their women don't think their men are manly enough.
"Yes she can learn about a country that promotes the group over the individual. But why is that inherently bad?"
This is sort of like how the idea of 'women and children first' only makes sense in a small society like a village. You are all in it together and it can make sure your genetics gets passed on, even if you die. These ideas work on small scales where there is personal investment with all involved. When you are just a faceless cog in nation of 10s of millions, its super easy for you to be consumed by society with no net benefit for you or your offspring.
Good-bye
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.