I support Biometrics as a Technology

Among the use cases of biometrics as a valid identification technology that I support are forensics and the detection of invaders at critical facilities like intelligence offices, nuke plants and the like.

I could support the use of biometrics for the screening of citizens for securing the citizens’ safety (not the power of the despotic rulers), PROVIDED the citizens are correctly informed of not only the benefits but also the risks to their human rights.

I could also support the biometrics as an auxiliary tool of identity authentication where availability and convenience, not security, matter, PROVIDED citizens are correctly informed of the risks as well as the merits.

I do not support the behaviours of those biometrics vendors who are

Not transparent about the empirical false acceptance rates and the corresponding false rejection rates (empirical = actually measured in the actual use environment, both indoor and outdoor),

Claiming that their biometrics solutions kill the password while relying on a default/fallback password registered in case of false rejection,

Claiming that their biometrics solutions contribute to better security while lowering the overall security by the multi-entrance deployment (not security-enhancing multi-layer formation) of the biometrics and a fallback means.

Biometrics, which measures the unpredictably variable body features of living animals in ever changing environments, is inevitably probabilistic, meaning that it cannot be free of the trade-off between false acceptance and false rejection.

The graphs shown above give a clue to what would be the correct and wrong use cases of biometrics.

Website — https://www.mnemonicidentitysolutions.com/

Digital identity blogs collected at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/collection-digital-identity-comments-hitoshi-kokumai-posted-kokumai/