What's Wrong With Fingerprints?
It’s not a question you’ll hear me ask often, but when PrestoVivace sends me a link to “DOD plans to recognize more than just fingerprints:”
“We’re looking for new technologies, innovators and companies that recognize that the biometrics enterprise in the Defense Department and the U.S. government in five years is going to be very different from what we have now,” said Joseph Guzman, who was appointed [Biometrics Management Office]’s acting director Aug. 1.
One possible answer is that there’s a deficiency in the fingerprint scanners in use. Another is that forces of evil within the Pentagon want to “seed a new market” to help get biometrics out there. The third, and I suspect the most likely, is that the Pentagon is not a war-fighting machine, but a technology procurement bureaucracy, and the procurement of more technology is the way to advance your career.
The security implications may be good or bad: Additional layers of security may make faking biometrics harder, or they may open cracks in the system where people are able to use one of three systems to log in. In which case, the weakest link secures the chain.
The third, and I suspect the most likely, is that the Pentagon is not a war-fighting machine, but a technology procurement bureaucracy
Martin Libicki notes that government purchasing power is a very effective standards-setting tool. Of course, they waited a little longer than one would expect to get on the TCP/IP bandwagon, but they did a decent job on CAD specs back in the day.
There *are* a lot of deficiencies in current fingerprint scanners. I seem to recall a paper where scientists found that a gelatin imprint of a fingerprint was usually good enough, and could be created from a latent print pulled from something else.
Hi David,
I agree, there are lots of deficiencies with fingerprint scanners, but none of them are new. So I’m curious, why are they doing this now?