Why Biometrics is Inevitably Probabilistic ?

Dr Debesh Choudhury — Nice to have another informative newsletter. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/probabilistic-nature-biometrics-recognition-makes-choudhury-phd

I would like to add that biometrics is not probabilistic because of the high signal-noise ratio of the electric circuits for scanning. Biometrics is probabilistic in nature because it measures the unpredictably variable body features of living animals in ever changing environment.

Ref: “What these 2 graphs tell us about biometrics” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-2-graphs-tell-us-biometrics-hitoshi-kokumai

Passwords and physical tokens are deterministic because judging ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on whether or not the presented passwords and physical tokens are correct/authentic are deterministic by nature.

Ref: “What We Know for Certain about Authentication Factors” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-we-know-certain-authentication-factors-hitoshi-kokumai/

By the way, it is not possible to decide that deterministic passwords are more secure than probabilistic biometrics. — Comparison between deterministic passwords and probabilistic biometrics would get us nowhere, say, it is an attempt to compare what cannot be compared by nature. It might be likened to attempting to compare the weight of my head and the warmth of your heart.

That the biometrics used with a default/fallback password in a two-entrance/in-parallel formation would provide the level of security lower than a password-only authentication, is an inevitable scientific conclusion.

Well, you might also be interested in this happy-go-lucky biometrics discussion, which Dr Choudhury and I jumped into — https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sandeepalur_digiyatra-digitalpublicgoods-digitalpublicinfrastructure-activity-7076957506379415552-m2Ol