Entries Tagged "biometrics"

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Voice Authentication in Telephone Banking

This seems like a good idea, assuming it is reliable.

The introduction of voice verification was preceded by an extensive period of testing among more than 1,450 people and 25,000 test calls. These were made using both fixed-line and mobile telephones, at all times of day and also by relatives (including six twins). Special attention was devoted to people who were suffering from colds during the test period. ABN AMRO is the first major bank in the world to introduce this technology in this way.

Posted on July 21, 2006 at 7:43 AM • View Comments

Password-Protected Bullets

New invention, just patented:

Meyerle is patenting a design for a modified cartridge that would be fired by a burst of high-frequency radio energy. But the energy would only ignite the charge if a solid-state switch within the cartridge had been activated. This would only happen if a password entered into the gun using a tiny keypad matched one stored in the cartridge.

When they are sold, cartridges could be programmed with a password that matches the purchaser’s gun. An owner could set the gun to request the password when it is reloaded, or to perform a biometric check before firing. The gun could also automatically lock itself after a pre-set period of time has passed since the password was entered.

Posted on June 30, 2006 at 6:41 AM • View Comments

Face Recognition Comes to Bars

BioBouncer is a face recognition system intended for bars:

Its camera snaps customers entering clubs and bars, and facial recognition software compares them with stored images of previously identified troublemakers. The technology alerts club security to image matches, while innocent images are automatically flushed at the end of each night, Dussich said. Various clubs can share databases through a virtual private network, so belligerent drunks might find themselves unwelcome in all their neighborhood bars.

Anyone want to guess how long that “automatically flushed at the end of each night” will last? This data has enormous value. Insurance companies will want to know if someone was in a bar before a car accident. Employers will want to know if their employees were drinking before work—think airplane pilots. Private investigators will want to know who walked into a bar with whom. The police will want to know all sorts of things. Lots of people will want this data—and they’ll all be willing to pay for it.

And the data will be owned by the bars thatcollect it. They can choose to erase it, or they can choose to sell it to data aggregators like Acxiom.

It’s rarely the initial application that’s the problem. It’s the follow-on applications. It’s the function creep. Before you know it, everyone will know that they are identified the moment they walk into a commercial building. We will all lose privacy, and liberty, and freedom as a result.

Posted on February 28, 2006 at 3:47 PM • View Comments

DNA Surveillance in the UK

Wholesale surveillance from the UK:

About 4,000 men working and living in South Croydon are being asked to voluntarily give their DNA as part of the hunt for a teenage model’s killer.

Well, sort of voluntarily:

“It is an entirely voluntary process. None of those DNA samples or finger prints will be used to check out any other unsolved crimes.

“Obviously if someone does refuse then each case will be reviewed on its own merits.

Did the detective chief inspector just threaten those 4,000 men? Sure seems that way to me.

Posted on February 28, 2006 at 7:31 AM • View Comments

Privatizing Registered Traveler

Last week the TSA announced details of its Registered Traveler program. Basically, you pay money for a background check and get a biometric ID—a fingerprint—that gets you through airline security faster. (See also this and this AP story.)

I’ve already written about why this is a bad idea for security:

What the Trusted Traveler program does is create two different access paths into the airport: high security and low security. The intent is that only good guys will take the low-security path, and the bad guys will be forced to take the high-security path, but it rarely works out that way. You have to assume that the bad guys will find a way to take the low-security path.

The Trusted Traveler program is based on the dangerous myth that terrorists match a particular profile and that we can somehow pick terrorists out of a crowd if we only can identify everyone. That’s simply not true. Most of the 9/11 terrorists were unknown and not on any watch list. Timothy McVeigh was an upstanding US citizen before he blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel are normal, nondescript people. Intelligence reports indicate that Al Qaeda is recruiting non-Arab terrorists for US operations.

But what the TSA is actually doing is even more bizarre. The TSA is privatizing this system. They want the companies that sell for-profit, Registered Traveler passes to do the background checks. They want the companies to use error-filled commercial databases to do this. What incentive do these companies have to not sell someone a pass? Who is liable for mistakes?

I thought airline security was important.

This essay is an excellent discussion of the problems here.

Welcome to the brave new world of “market-driven” airport security, where different private security firms run and operate different lanes at different checkpoints, offering varied levels of accelerated screening depending on how much a user paid and how deep of a background check he or she submitted to. Thus the speed at which you move through a checkpoint will theoretically depend on a multiplicity of factors, only two of which are under your control (the depth of your background check and the firm(s) with which you’ve contracted). Other factors affecting your screening time, like which private security firm is manning a checkpoint and what resources that particular firm has invested in a particular checkpoint (e.g. extra personnel, more screening equipment, and so on) at a particular time of day, are entirely out of your control.

This is certainly a good point:

What’s worse than having identity thieves impersonate you to Chase Bank? Having terrorists impersonate you to the TSA.

Posted on February 1, 2006 at 6:11 AM • View Comments

The Failure of US-VISIT

US-VISIT is the program to program to fingerprint and otherwise keep tabs on foriegn visitors to the U.S. This article talks about how the program is being rolled out, but the last paragraph is the most interesting:

Since January 2004, US-VISIT has processed more than 44 million visitors. It has spotted and apprehended nearly 1,000 people with criminal or immigration violations, according to a DHS press release.

I wrote about US-VISIT in 2004, and back then I said that it was too expensive and a bad trade-off. The price tag for “the next phase” was $15B; I’m sure the total cost is much higher.

But take that $15B number. One thousand bad guys, most of them not very bad, caught through US-VISIT. That’s $15M per bad guy caught.

Surely there’s a more cost-effective way to catch bad guys?

Posted on January 31, 2006 at 4:07 PM • View Comments

Kevin Kelly on Anonymity

He’s against it:

More anonymity is good: that’s a dangerous idea.

Fancy algorithms and cool technology make true anonymity in mediated environments more possible today than ever before. At the same time this techno-combo makes true anonymity in physical life much harder. For every step that masks us, we move two steps toward totally transparent unmasking. We have caller ID, but also caller ID Block, and then caller ID-only filters. Coming up: biometric monitoring and little place to hide. A world where everything about a person can be found and archived is a world with no privacy, and therefore many technologists are eager to maintain the option of easy anonymity as a refuge for the private.

However in every system that I have seen where anonymity becomes common, the system fails. The recent taint in the honor of Wikipedia stems from the extreme ease which anonymous declarations can be put into a very visible public record. Communities infected with anonymity will either collapse, or shift the anonymous to pseudo-anonymous, as in eBay, where you have a traceable identity behind an invented nickname. Or voting, where you can authenticate an identity without tagging it to a vote.

Anonymity is like a rare earth metal. These elements are a necessary ingredient in keeping a cell alive, but the amount needed is a mere hard-to-measure trace. In larger does these heavy metals are some of the most toxic substances known to a life. They kill. Anonymity is the same. As a trace element in vanishingly small doses, it’s good for the system by enabling the occasional whistleblower, or persecuted fringe. But if anonymity is present in any significant quantity, it will poison the system.

There’s a dangerous idea circulating that the option of anonymity should always be at hand, and that it is a noble antidote to technologies of control. This is like pumping up the levels of heavy metals in your body into to make it stronger.

Privacy can only be won by trust, and trust requires persistent identity, if only pseudo-anonymously. In the end, the more trust, the better. Like all toxins, anonymity should be keep as close to zero as possible.

I don’t even know where to begin. Anonymity is essential for free and fair elections. It’s essential for democracy and, I think, liberty. It’s essential to privacy in a large society, and so it is essential to protect the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority…and to protect individual self-respect.

Kelly makes the very valid point that reputation makes society work. But that doesn’t mean that 1) reputation can’t be anonymous, or 2) anonymity isn’t also essential for society to work.

I’m writing an essay on this for Wired News. Comments and arguments, pro or con, are appreciated.

Posted on January 5, 2006 at 1:20 PM • View Comments

Weakest Link Security

Funny story:

At the airport where this pilot fish works, security has gotten a lot more attention since 9/11. “All the security doors that connect the concourses to office spaces and alleyways for service personnel needed an immediate upgrade,” says fish. “It seems that the use of a security badge was no longer adequate protection.

“So over the course of about a month, more than 50 doors were upgraded to require three-way protection. To open the door, a user needed to present a security badge (something you possess), a numeric code (something you know) and a biometric thumb scan (something you are).

“Present all three, and the door beeps and lets you in.”

One by one, the doors are brought online. The technology works, and everything looks fine—until fish decides to test the obvious.

After all, the average member of the public isn’t likely to forge a security badge, guess a multidigit number and fake a thumb scan. “But what happens if you just turn the handle without any of the above?” asks fish. “Would it set off alarms or call security?

“It turns out that if you turn the handle, the door opens.

“Despite the addition of all that technology and security on every single door, nobody bothered to check that the doors were set to lock by default.”

Remember, security is only as strong as the weakest link.

Posted on December 14, 2005 at 11:59 AM • View Comments

Stride-Based Security

Can a cell phone detect if it is stolen by measuring the gait of the person carrying it?

Researchers at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have developed a prototype of a cell phone that uses motion sensors to record a user’s walking pattern of movement, or gait. The device then periodically checks to see that it is still in the possession of its legitimate owner, by measuring the current stride and comparing it against that stored in its memory.

Clever, as long as you realize that there are going to be a lot of false alarms. This seems okay:

If the phone suspects it has fallen into the wrong hands, it will prompt the user for a password if they attempt to make calls or access its memory.

Posted on November 16, 2005 at 6:26 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.