Big Brother and Biometrics

By: Jimmy McGibney

In Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report, the year is 2054 and the police use eye scanners to keep constant track of the population. Private sector "authorities" like hotels and shops do the same, and every advertisement knows your name (and probably how much is in your bank account). If you think this is pure science fiction, think again. Identification technologies like eye scanners that rely on biological characteristics, already exist.

Technologies that can be used to recognise a person are collectively known as biometrics. Biometrics are of course not an entirely new idea - fingerprinting has been around since well before the days of Sherlock Holmes - but they are attracting increasing interest due to the range of techniques available and a heightened security environment. One of the latest developments is that countries participating in the United States visa waiver programme must start issuing passports that contain biometric data, or else be excluded from the programme.
Some examples of biometrics include:

* Fingerprinting - long-established, non-intrusive and inexpensive, fingerprinting is reliable though this has not been scientifically proven; it is sometimes not trusted in the case of identical twins.
* Facial recognition - this is the method of choice for the human brain (we all recognise people by their faces), but has proven difficult to achieve with technology. Facial recognition techniques need to be clever enough to deal with beards, spectacles and of course different facial expressions. As a result, these systems tend to be very complex and expensive. A big advantage though is their non-intrusiveness as the subject is not normally aware they are being recognised.
* Voice recognition - this is also often done by the human brain (e.g. on the telephone), though perhaps we're not as good at this as we are at facial recognition. Automated voice recognition, based on the analysis of digitised speech is highly reliable though as each person's voice is quite different and difficult to imitate. It's even possible to tell the difference between live and recorded speech. Difficulties arise with background noise and the fact that the subject might be unwilling or unable to speak.
* Hand geometry - non-intrusive but not very reliable; useful in conjunction with other techniques

* Iris scanning - this involves scanning the iris (coloured part of the eye). Very accurate, but expensive; requires the camera to be very close to the eye, so it is intrusive and requires the cooperation of the subject. There are problems with blind people or people with cataracts.
* Keystroke dynamics - how a person types is unique. This biometric has potential in detecting unauthorised use of a computer system.
* DNA - this is well established and highly reliable, though is not completely trusted in some legal scenarios.

There are several other examples, and the number of possibilities is only limited by the diversity of human attributes. Body odour has even been suggested as a biometric!

In today's society there is great demand for accurate and varied identification methods, be it for a person getting onto a plane, a customer doing their online banking or a student looking for exam results over the phone. Traditional techniques like passwords, secret questions, and so on, all have flaws. Taking computer passwords as an example, people tend to forget passwords, or share them with friends, or choose passwords that are easy to guess. It is reasonable that biometrics will play an increasing role. The big advantages are that biometric techniques can be much faster than manually entering a password or answering questions, can't be "forgotten" and are difficult to fool, in theory at least.

Despite these benefits, the increasing use of biometrics provides major challenges to society. How do we protect people's privacy if they can be observed and automatically identified without their noticing? Law enforcement authorities could conceivably see biometrics as a whole new set of tools for "controlling" the population and sharing with each other, even though some of the techniques might be quite invasive and potentially distressing for the subjects. Furthermore, there is a risk that people with disabilities might be excluded from services that depend on biometric identification. It has even been suggested that some biometric techniques pose health risks; repeated eye scanning with lasers, for example, can cause damage. Also, most biometric systems are not foolproof - for example, gelatine fingers can be made to match any given fingerprint.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing though is the permanency of the biometric blueprint. If your password has been compromised, you can change your password. It's not so easy to change your biological attributes - though needless to say they did find a way in Minority Report!