I’m no fan of ID cards or biometrics, and I’d vote against any party that proposed it. But you’re not right, Kimpatsu. It’s not a complete farce.

The ability to defeat the fingerprint reader limits effectiveness and could result in innocent people being fairly easily set-up.

But do you think that every foreign visitor who commits criminal acts in Japan:
a) comes into the country with the express intention of doing that; and therefore also
b) attempts to defeat that system; and
c) has the dexterity not to get caught by an immigration official who is about 50cm away and dealing with only the one person at a time?

(And remember that in the Japanese system there is also a camera to take a photo on the same machine.)

Let’s think about in practice what conditios would have to be met to defeat the system. If we have somebody with a criminal record, who:
a) Had a passport which didn’t already have their encoded fingerprint (or even a forged one that did have their own fingerprint, or conceivably even a real passport that had been originally made with a bogus fingerprint); and
b) Had either a real passport that didn’t connect to their criminal record or a forged passport which didn’t trigger any alarm; and
c) succeeded in hoodwinking both the immigration official and the fingerprint machine; and
d) had a passport with a photo which passed both the immigration inspector’s and the machine comparison; and

s/he may get through immigration, with the further possibility of having a problem at the Customs inspection.

Of course if anything at all triggered suspicion, they’re going to be very lucky to get through a more rigorous check with their clumsily forged fingerprint.

But if we talk about somebody who commits a criminal offence whilst in Japan, I think we can be fairly confident that the vast majority of them will not have even tried to defeat the fingerprint reader (if more than a handful of people were ever caught trying to do so, a new system of manual finger inspections would certainly be introduced) any fingerprints found at a crime scene would already connect to their name and passport.

Summary: it may be defeated sometimes and it may make it easier for a criminal to set-up an innocent person, but in this case it’s not a farce. No, no, definitely not.

1) to be effective, it would have to be an offence not to be able to show the ID card when required to. Probably an on the spot fine. Nice earner ?

2) there is a distinct possibility, based on previous events, that amongst the remains of suicide bombers would be found perfectly valid identity cards.

3) the more complicated the recognition technology, the less likely it is to work and the more expensive it will be for the public. (see 1))

I heard an anecdote about a jeweller who was held up at the US/Canada border because the guards couldn’t get a read on her prints. She supposedly had a hard time convincing them she wasn’t imperiling the homeland.

Obviously not a problem with iris scans, but the fingerprinting story came to mind.

If an ID card/passport checks ok on the system, the guard/policeman/stasi will wave you through. You’d only need to look vaguely like the picture. The computer says yes, so it’s a yes.

Given that passports can already be scanned and copied, without the holder knowing, anyone could walk through border control provided they’re the same race/gender as the photo they’ve nicked as the computer says yes.

Clone a fingerprint, and you could look even less like them.

Instead of dumbing down – “smarten up”, and don’t patronise us! The TV audience should at least be capable of GCSE maths/physics/chemistry.

The problem is that there is a vast imbalance of humanities to science graduates in the media which is why there is a huge problem of the media misunderstanding and therefore misreporting scientific issues.

What if somebody was able to access the database and insert false records or modify existing ones?

With a modification of existing records, if the data is encrypted onto the actual card you carry, then there would be no immediate repercussions but when you came to renew your card (assuming like passports renew every 10 years) then the system would reject you. This could cause huge problem for somebody.

Likewise with false records, once the data was in the system it would not be challanged.

Anybody going to tell me that this would not make the ID database a huge target for hackers?

Finger waggler, an illegal immigrant is defined by the Home Office as those that have entered the UK without authority (e.g. bypassing border controls), those who have entered with false documents, and those that have overstayed their visa. Identity cards wouldn’t be issued to people that entered the UK without authority. They may be issued to people who entered on false papers, but then the situation wouldn’t be any different from today because they’re going to avoid being in situations where their identity cards are used. They may even throw them away. Likewise people that have deliberatly overstayed their visa. Given the majority of those people work in the black economy it is unlikely that ID card will affect them at all.

It’s nothing like saying ‘cars should be banned because sometimes they kill people’. That is what is called a straw man argument. The argument is that the benefits from ID cards will be marginal or non existent, and it will not solve or affect the issues it is puported to solve. This is an opinion backed by the majority of the UK’s experts in the field of information security and cryptogtaphy.

we do not have the right ‘control’ experiment for this; you would have to remove the ID system and see if their illegal immigration went up. In regard to france, it seems that lots of immigrants prefer to come here, possibly because of the language, or maybe because this country is more welcoming (…getting a bit jingoistic there…!). An ID system would make this country less attractive, at least for those wishing to come here illegally.

The ‘it doens’t work perfectly, so we can’t have it’ is a weak argument IMO. It’s like saying cars should be banned because occasionally people crash (and sometimes kill innocent bystanders).

The Onion on the ‘fake acupuncture cures backpain’ study:

www.theonion.com/content/amvo/study_acupuncture_works

Prion – 03:32pm Nov 26, 2007 GMT (#1980 of 2007)
If the probability that facial recognition would correctly match a person to their entry on the NIR is 0.69 (69%) and fingerprint recognition is 0.81 (81%) and iris recognition is 0.96 (96%), then the probability of ALL three matching you on the database would be 0.9956 (99.56%) (Using Bayes theorem)

AND ANOTHER

stochata – 07:59pm Nov 26, 2007 GMT (#2004 of 2007)
Bayes theorem says P(A|B)=P(A)P(B|A)/P(B)

The formalism (X|Y) is “X given Y”. For example, the probability it’s you given a positive biometric match.

For example, P(A) is the probability it is you (1 in 60 million if we have 60 million records in our database), P(B) is the probability that the scan matches you arbitrarily (unknown: it’s essentially, what proportion of the population match any one scan). We do know P(B|A), the probability of the scan matching given it’s you: e.g., for facial recognition, 0.69 or whatever it was. P(A|B), the probability of it being you in front of the scanner given a postive match is also unknown.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t help us because there are too many unknowns.

If someone knows either of the unknowns or their complements (the probability it’s not you given the scan is negative, or the probability of a negative match), then Bayes theorem might be useful.

As it stands it’s just a bizarre diversion. The use of it above is incorrect.

Edit: I should add that A needs to be independent of B. Given it’s not, Bayes theorem in any case should be used with caution.