Have Your Fingerprints Read From 6 Meters Away 122
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.
Gloves (Score:5, Interesting)
So are we going back to the habit of wearing silk gloves all the time now? I wouldn't mind that.
not a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think perfect identification, be it biometric, technological, or other, is in any way a good thing.
There are perfectly valid reasons for needing or wanting aliases, which are not associated with being a criminal.
Take for instance, employees of a collections agency. These are people who perform a distasteful, but still required service. Nobody really likes being called by a bill collector, nor do they like having to use one to get deadbeat clients to pay up. Deadbeats especially, despise bill collectors, and some are even belligerent enough to be a real physical threat to collection employees. This is why many collections agencies provide work aliases for call center staff, etc. If a foolproof means of identifying people is developed, these employees are at risk.
Then you have the quintessential witness protection program. These are people that have witnessed a violent or serious crime, and are now embroiled through no fault of their own in some serious shit. If Big Tony can perfectly identify them through his ring of heavies using foolproof tech, this program becomes effectively worthless.
and last, but certainly far from least, you have the serious problems with the Feds, and their "Papers Please!" abuses. History does a fine job of explaining, in graphic, nightmare inducing detail, exactly why perfectly being identifiable by government officials is bad bad juju.
People making startups, and companies offering products:
I understand that there is a very strong demand for this kind of technology. Please also understand exactly *why* there is a demand for this kind of technology, and what it opens the door to. Is landing a fat contract and making bank worth endangering people's lives, and being directly complicit in abuses of power that very well inevitably kill people really worth it?
I personally dont think it is.
This kind of technology, in the broad and general sense, is not a good thing. Please stop developing it.
... this means fingerprints can't be used for ID (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone needs to lift finger prints from a subject it has traditionally meant that someone needs to get him to touch something. With this, a guy can walk behind you, take a few pictures without ever touching you, and have your finger prints printed out in rubber.
Rather then giving us a better way to use finger prints... this means we have to go to retina scans.
There has to be a better way.
No worries... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody will every buy it. Except for government, fingerprint security is largely dead dead dead.
First off, fingerprints can be replicated. Secondly, these types of optical systems have a (relatively) high failure rate (dust, smudges, adverse lighting conditions, etc). Next, they don't work with anyone under the age of 18 with reliability (the ridges and such vary considerably in size). Lastly - it freaks out the customers.
Anyone that thinks fingerprint security is going to succeed in the market is delusional at best. Been there, spent millions, done that. No matter how good the system is or how safe the fingerprints are it just isn't going to be good enough for anything other than a door lock.
Angular resolution (Score:4, Interesting)
Hang on, what about the angular resolution of visible light at 6m, with indents in surely being 0.1mm? Can we get high enough resolution Is that even possible? How fast must the picture be taken to avoid blurring?
No, haven't RTFA. So sue me.