* Ten years ago, biometrics and their use for authentication was the subject of debate
Last issue we looked at the controversy surrounding Google’s collection of what appears to be personally identifiable data and storing it in databases for all and sundry to search. Some folks are up in arms about this, and I applaud them. But privacy issues like this are nothing new.
Google is Ginormous: Why You Should Care
Ten years ago, in June 2000, this newsletter was looking at biometrics and their use for authentication. The issue caused some debate on the Network World forums (alas, that has disappeared into the ether), which I took note of in the newsletter. “It was Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union who took this as an opportunity to sound off on big government, police states, Big Brother and incipient totalitarianism. ‘The widespread use of biometrics and the creation of biometric databases threatens to rob us of the precious right to go about our daily lives without being observed and identified,’ Steinhardt said.” Evidently he wants to institute anonymous access to my corporate network!
What?
In a companion article by Network World’s Sharon Gaudin, “Biometrics eyes the enterprise”, she quotes Martin Reynolds, a vice president and research fellow at DataQuest (now part of Gartner):
“The ugly truth is if you’re storing people’s fingerprints in a database, that database is searchable. Say you have a large company and somebody steals the CEO’s cigar box. They find a fingerprint and compare it to what’s in the database. Or say the police come asking for a copy of someone’s fingerprint. That all amounts to an unlawful search.”
Except, of course, that the “fingerprint” stored in the database is simply a metric devised from measurements taken by the reader, not the image of a fingerprint that’s familiar from detective shows on TV. Sadly, that’s an error that’s still being made today.
Obviously wrong-headed statements like these tend to dilute the effectiveness of correct indictments of privacy-violating practices, such as Google’s data collection mentioned in the last issue. It’s a constant fight, requiring you to always be alert and to question blanket statements, even mine.
