CLPEX Chat Board

Here is a disturbing article with false information about fingerprints from a representative of my agency.

http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/2 ... 5041543403

"Deputy Charles Eggers, technical services officer for the Weld Jail, said the iris scan is more accurate than a fingerprint"

"Like fingerprints, irises are different in every person, Eggers said. They are formed by 18 months of age and are so unique that not even both eyes of the same person are the same".

"To the Weld Jail, an iris scan is far better than fingerprints, which can take hours to verify through state and national databases. The iris scan can come up with a positive match in about 30 seconds".

"A fingerprint uses about 10 data points to compare features such as ridges and valleys in a persons finger. The iris scan uses 400 data points, Eggers said".

This is an employee of my own agency giving this false and misleading information about fingerprints to the media. I plan on addressing this issue but would appreciate some advice on what points need to be brought up. Your thoughts?

Funny, I've never seen and "iris print" left at a crime scene.

Iris scan is just another ID verification tool. Technology that can produce a 10 second fingerprint verification (or less) has been around for a while, if that's all one is trying to do--verify identity. Our adult detention center is looking at implementing a two-finger verification system integrated with the afis and mugshot system so that the wrong inmate will not be released.

Basically, my arguement is that an integrated fingerprint and mugshot system has the most versatility and potential investigative uses. Iris scan, while a novel idea, has limited potential other than ID verification or access control--in my opinion, for whatever it's worth.

Bill

Will this help?

Questions over eye scan plan
By Mark Ward
BBC News Online technology correspondent

Experts and official reports are casting doubt on plans to use iris scanning to improve security at national borders.


This week UK Home Secretary David Blunkett reportedly won the backing of his G8 counterparts to rapidly develop an iris-based biometric system as an extra check on the identity of international travellers.

But technical reports in the UK and US have expressed doubts about whether biometrics will be able to do what ministers hope they can.

Experts have also voiced reservations about large scale use of iris scanning which has yet to be tested on significant numbers of people.

Markus Kuhn, a lecturer in computer security at the University of Cambridge computer lab, said biometrics were gaining popularity because they were a relatively reliable way to verify someone's identity.

"There's a great amount of information in the iris that makes it possible to reduce the false accept/reject ratios to less than one in a million," he said.

"Biometrics are useful as confirmation of your claimed identity."

Certainly, said Mr Kuhn, biometrics were better at verifying identities than humans were when asked to match unfamiliar faces with small photographs in passports and other identity documents.

However, he added, their usefulness broke down when used to pick out wanted individuals, such as suspected terrorists, from the mass of people passing through a checkpoint.

With huge databases of biometric records it was likely that many people would be misidentified as being wanted or missed altogether, he said.

In February 2002 the US Department of Defence issued a report that found wide discrepancies between manufacturers' claims of successful biometric identification rates and those seen in the field.

Failed tests

The report found that iris recognition did better than most but one manufacturer's claim of a 0.5% false identification rate ballooned to 6% during the DOD tests.

With 13 million people currently on the FBI's watch list, any large scale biometric system could mean millions of people being detained when crossing borders.

Other studies of biometrics have also expressed doubts that the technology could be reliably used on a large scale.

A report issued by the US General Accounting Office in November 2002 said that the largest iris scanning system currently in use had only 30,000 records.

By contrast any system used to verify the identities of people travelling to and from the US, for example, would have to contain up to 240 million records. By comparison up to 90 million people travel through the UK every year.

The GAO warned that it was "unknown" how a system with many millions of records would perform.

It noted that any biometric system would do little to stem the numbers of illegal immigrants because most of them did not enter the US through recognised ports, and avoided all identity checks.

A report from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology issued last year said that, so far, not enough records yet existed for it to work out if the iris was a good enough guarantor of identity.

Technical difficulties

Professor Mike Fairhurst, a computer vision and biometrics expert from the Department of Electronics at the University of Kent, said getting large numbers of people to successfully use a biometric system could prove problematic.

"One of the problems is interaction between individuals and the system doing the checking," he said.

Tests of biometric systems by the UK's Communication Electronics Security Group have shown that people can take up to ten times as long to get through them than the existing passport checks.

"People have a natural resistance to different types of biometric measures," he said, "some cultures are not happy about touching surfaces touched by others and some people do not like lights being shone in their eyes."

China has already ruled out using iris scanning as an additional check for its new identity card because of public fears about the damage such scanning could do.

What would also have to be tightened up, said Professor Fairhurst, was the whole process of issuing travel documents or identity papers so only genuine people were enrolled.

He also said that the international standards for what constitutes a valid identity check by iris scanning had not yet been established.

New study highlights iris scan shortcomings

By Alice Lipowicz
Staff Writer

Biometric iris scans may be ineffective for up to one million people in the United Kingdom who are blind or have visual impairments such as cataracts, according to a report from the London School of Economics & Political Science.

If the U.K. parliament requires iris recognition technology for a biometric identity card for citizens, it would discriminate against people with deteriorating eyesight, said the report, titled “The Identity Project: An Assessment of the UK Identity Cards Bill and its Implications.”

The U.K. legislature currently is considering the Identity Cards Bill to create a national ID card with a computer chip containing iris and fingerprint biometrics.

The report identified shortcomings to the iris scan, among other problems. “There exists a threat that this technique may inherently discriminate against people with visual impairment,” the report stated. “The available literature indicates that blind and partially sighted people may be unable to use such systems, may generate unstable or unusable biometric data, or may suffer disproportionate disadvantage in using such systems.”

Visually-impaired people typically are excluded from iris scan research trials. “It appears no trials have been undertaken with specific reference to blind or visually impaired users,” the report said.

Yet iris-based systems may be problematic for large numbers of people, including those who have experienced eye injuries or surgeries, the report said. The 250,000 people a year who receive cataract surgery in the U.K. may experience rejection from an iris scan system after the surgery, and may need to re-enroll their irises in the system, the report said. People who suffer from eye tremors also may have difficulty presenting stable images of their irises to participate in the scanning systems. “Whether the estimated 60,000 or so people with Nystagmus in the U.K. will be able to use iris biometric systems will depend entirely on whether the government is prepared to ensure that appropriate iris camera equipment is made generally available,” the report said.

Furthermore, the report said some tests have found that up to 7 percent of iris scans fail due to watery eyes, long eyelashes and hard contact lenses.

Finally, iris scans, as well as fingerprint scans and other biometrics, can be “spoofed” with forgeries and counterfeit information, the report said.

Based on this and many other criticisms, the report does not recommend the National Identity Card proposal. “This report concludes that the proposals currently being considered by Parliament do not represent the most appropriate, secure, cost effective or practical identity system for the United Kingdom,” it said.

It advises alternative identity technologies in more limited forms, such as allowing consumers to access government services through the Internet.

charlton97 wrote:...
Professor Mike Fairhurst, a computer vision and biometrics expert from the Department of Electronics at the University of Kent...

Just in case anyone's wondering...No relation, as far as I know.

Thanks Bill and Dave C. for the helpful comments.