Biometrics and Porn

Ok so no porn. :)

The other day, I was watching, this show on The History Channel, about train robbers, in the mid 1900's. They got about 20 tons of money, and got away. And most of them got caught. One person managed to escape. He then went to a plastic surgeon, and had his face modified. Then he wen to Rio De Janerio (if i remember correctly) and lives there to this day.

Now here comes my part about the biometrics:

The government (US) has increasingly become interested in using biometrics for security. But what happens, when a terrorist/felon/bad guy has plastic surgery done. Will they still be recognized? I would not think so, but perhaps I am wrong. Anyone have an answer?

Depends on the type of Biometrics you are referring to...fingerprints can be modified or even changed...(think about the movie 'Se7en'), but retinal and iris scans, although expensive, are arguably better than a fingerprint. They require living tissue to facilitate the scan (no cutting out someone else's eye:)) The long term impact has yet to be recognized, but as long as the laws of the land follow suit (i.e. personal privacy, 4th Amendment, reasonable doubt)...there should be nothing to worry about for honest citizens...

Ouroboros

Though goodness knows, everyone will be paranoid about such issues.

In a related, rather odd note......I've heard that taffy pullers, who work for a long time pulling taffy, will lose their fingerprints........all the more reason to look at the retinas.

And in yet another related note........before fingerprints came out, there was great stock set in a certain system of measurements, that measured the proportions of people's limbs to each other. Bertillion mesurements, I believe they were called. They rather lost credit when fingerprints came out, though.

Ahh, main one i was talking about where the video camera's. They "seem" to be the most common. Although the retinal scans, are appearing in Airports now. From what i understand of the video camera's. They match up the facial structure, with ones that are in a database. That is where, the plastic surgery would come in.

I agree with this to a point:
The long term impact has yet to be recognized, but as long as the laws of the land follow suit (i.e. personal privacy, 4th Amendment, reasonable doubt)...there should be nothing to worry about for honest citizens...

I am an honest citizen, but I sure don't like the idea, of a camera finding out who I am. On a busy street, Mall, Grocery Store, whatever. I feel that it is an invasion of privacy. Besides, the more information, that is collected of you, the easier it is for "Bad Guys" to steal your identity. And it is easy enough as it is.

Plastic surgery could fool the biometric stuff that measures the features of you face. Contacts would probably fool the eye scanning thing. Now if only you could change your DNA and blood type.

What no porn I was deceived :)

I read somewhere that they are moving away from retinal scans and concentrating more on iris scans. They say that it is just as accurate, and less intrusive.

In my opinion, any laser pointed at my eye is a no go.

PS// I think that you might be referring to Ronnie Biggs, who was one of the great train robbers. He left Rio some time ago, and went home a frailing old man (in his late 70's I think), for the reason that he wanted a "pint and a curry". Upon his arrival in the UK, they whacked his arse straight in jail.

Hmm,
One problem with your plastic surgeory theory. If you have your face remodeled, you will be unrecognizable to the human eye. But biometrics look at different principals of the face than do humans. With biometrics it judges faces by certain key features that are highly unlikely to change, over age, surgeory etc. If my memory serves me right, the places are on outside edge of the nostrils, the outer edges of the lips, the lowest part of the chin, and the outside and inside edge of the eye cavities. Now remember, biometrics is judged usually straight on, and measured in depth. Now imagine all of those specific points on you face. To escape your profile you would have to make your eye cavaties smaller, you would be constantly squinting, pinch your whole nose together, or widen it all out, make your mouth thinner or wider across and drop or raise your chin. First off, that is one whole hell of a lot of surgery, and second off, I am not sure that they can even do all of that, I doubt that they can make your eye holes smaller, or cut the sides of your mouth farther open. Ouch. Well anyway, that is just my opinion, if I made any mistakes or you would like to comment on this, please post.

would cologen in the lips change the size of them? as they would be bigger and so make them stand out more and change the size of them? just a thought! i still think DNA testing is the safest bet ( i am reminded of GATAGA the film about DNA testing at birth to tell if you will be sucessful in life or get cancer at 30) but there is no way anyone is stabbing me every day just to check who i am!

Once someone connects X-Rays with Biometerics plastic surgury won't do any good, but for the recent video face software, good expensive plastic surgury should fool the camera...

i remember seeing something about this on tv a couple of weeks ago...someone was asking if bin laden could have had plastic surgery to make himself unrecognizable....the dr. said given current plastic surgery techniques, there was really no way to that that drastic a change to a persons appearance...no Face Off here...they can make small...cosmetic changes but it wouldn't alter the features enough to make a difference...

he did say it would be possible given several years of very dangerous and extensive and expensive surgery to majorly alter ones apperance...but that involves things like reshaping the skull and jaw (ie...remove your face, saw your skull in pieces and rearrange the bits...sew your face back on...)

he said your probably better of growing a beard and dying your hair... :D

Interesting replies. I guess in the context of fooling biometric security devices, you could hire "good citizens" who have finally cracked, or enough money to make them do criminal acts. Then all of that expensive hardware, really does no good. Since the good citizen, wouldn't be in a criminal database.

Well.. A determined hacker or a so called BAD man can find a way to break into anything. Biometric devices are not completely immune to attack. As customers and the industry learn to what length intruders are willing to go to penetrate these new defenses, we will also continue to find the means to thwart their attempts. The point is to balance the solution to the threat.
It is the task of biometric products to apply a mathematical algorithm to the identifier (retina, or fingerprint for example) to determine if a user is a who they are pretending to be. In devices where a finger print is the means of identification, a small device will scan the fingerprint of the user and momentarily record the fine details. Where fingerprints are concern this may include features such as the finger prints' hills and valleys, the direction and branching points, line endings and dozens of other minutiae.
Restricted access is good, but what if you are rejected during the authentication procedure from accessing your own computer? It can happen if you have a large cut on your finger for instance. In such situations you would be in the same position as if you had forgotten your password. Heh. What would happen if you were just rejected for no reason, or even worse some one else had a finger print similar to yours and was able to gain access your computer? Well the odds are statistically in your favor that neither of these situations will occur.
All in all biometrics is the final piece in the security triangle and the most secure.

Facial biometrics, for example, rely on vector relations...unless you either break your face into a million+ pieces and rebuild it or have DRASTIC surgery, you are subject to basic recognition...

and...

"Based on the 1987 patented discovery of Drs. Leonard Flom and Aran Safirj that no two irises are alike, Iridian Technologies - http://www.iridiantech.com/index.php - uses a digital video camera to capture a black-and-white photo of the eye. It then discards from the image unnecessary details, such as eyelashes and contact lenses. Within seconds, the system examines the rich detail (blood vessel patterns) of the iris."

Ouroboros

The only thing biometrics should be used on is suspected terrorists, not every day Joe. As for the cameras, I believe airports, the White House, and State Capitols should have them. Also, I read on a different note, that the DOD is testing several different "people control" devices. These include sonic boom rifles, infrared pain rays, and more. Imagine what would happen if you didn't comply with the government? Especially on any "rights" they decided to take away for the benefit of everybody's so-called well being!





"You can get farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone"-AL CAPONE

Interesting post...I'll look into it sometime...but in the meantime, I still want my p0rn ;)

All this is good and dandy, but in my opinion, sometime in the near future they will be putting microchips in everyone, that will be the form of ID. it would probably give your location at anytime using Satelites.

there would be no way of escaping the law then.