Not All See Eye to Eye on Biometrics

In the papillary loops and whorls on the human fingertip, one of nature’s lovelier and more mystical truths kept itself hidden for eons. Only a century ago did scientists discover that no two fingerprints are alike.

In recent decades, science has learned that the rest of the human body is equally unique--the scattered specks of color in the eye, the timbre and tenor of a voice, the gradations of heat rising from a face.

For years, though, devices designed to recognize such minute anatomical signatures--from facial thermographs to body odor sensors--were found mostly in Defense Department laboratories, spy novels and movies.

Now, with increasingly accurate and affordable biometric devices beginning to appear in such unexotic places as suburban banks, welfare offices and grocery stores, their practical applications are finally being tested.

So, too, are issues of security and privacy, with the frontier of civil liberties likely to move beyond random drug testing to include the fingerprinting of employees and the electronic mapping of automated teller machine customers’ eyeballs. Such practices, critics suggest, could violate laws governing everything from search and seizure to equal protection.

A California Assembly bill seeks to regulate the use of biometric devices and data--the first such proposed legislation in the country. Supported by the unlikely alliance of the nonprofit Center for Law in the Public Interest and the California Bankers Assn., the bill would make trafficking in biometric information a crime and, among other things, mandate that if a bank installs, say, fingerprint scanners, it must put them in all branches, not just those in poor neighborhoods.

Opponents call the bill by Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles) an overanxious effort to regulate a promising young industry. Biometric firms quietly rang up about $140 million in sales last year--$25 million of which went for uses outside law enforcement--and analysts predict that the industry will grow to nearly $1 billion in annual sales by 2001.

It took a couple of decades, observers say, but the predictions of yesteryear’s futurists are finally coming to pass.

Since 1996, inmates at the Lancaster County Prison in Pennsylvania have been released only if an iris scan matches the one stored in a databank when they were first locked up.

Many athletes at this year’s Winter Olympics in Japan checked in by splaying their hand across a hand-geometry scanner. With Japan’s strict gun laws, and the lingering images of the armed attack that left 11 Israeli athletes dead at the 1972 Munich Games, biathletes were subjected to a retina scan before officials in Nagano would release the .22-caliber rifles and live ammunition they use in their sport.

BMW is trying to design a car that will start only after it recognizes the driver’s fingerprint.

Some Fear Black Market of Data

And in what is believed to be the first such use in the country, Century Bank’s Encino branch has done away with the old-fashioned, and occasionally misplaced, keys that employees needed to enter the inner vault, as well as the imprecise handwritten entry logs.

Operations manager Wilma Jean Tinto punches in her secret code, then presses a finger against a small optical prism. Within two seconds, her fingerprint is scanned and digitized, and its distinguishing features compared with other prints stored in an electronic databank.

Ka-chunk. The door unlocks.

“You may know my user ID number,” said Tinto, wagging the middle finger on her left hand. “But you can’t duplicate this.”

“If we can use biometric identification sensibly and securely, you will want to use your fingerprint and not your Social Security number, because you’ll know it’s much more secure,” said Ed Howard, executive director of the Center for Law in the Public Interest. But, he added, “if we don’t take steps now, your fingerprint and your voice are going to be as easy to steal as your Social Security number is now.”

Some skeptics worry about accidental releases of personal data and a black market of biometric information. Even now, it is possible for someone to secretly scan your iris or face.

Some iris-scan technologies--which don’t sear your eye with a James Bond-style laser beam but merely snap a digital photograph--can function from several feet away. Face-recognition technology, critics contend, could be used by government or police agencies to literally identify faces in a crowd. Any face that had already been stored in a databank could be identified much more quickly and with far more accuracy than the FBI enjoyed while snapping photographs of Vietnam War protesters.

“My concern is the all-seeing, all-knowing biometric database,” said Beth Givens of the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. “My dark side can foresee the old ‘Give me your papers’ scenario.”

The essential principles of biometrics have been largely understood for decades. Much of the early research took place in Defense Department labs, where researchers tinkered with new ways to keep government secrets a secret.

Only recently have technological improvements made the systems accurate enough to assuage the fears of those who safeguard cash in Los Angeles, the nation’s bank robbery capital, for example, and cheap enough to create a commercial market.

The basic system at Century Bank is manufactured by Sherman Oaks-based Biometric Identification Inc., an offshoot of a longtime defense contractor whose study of algorithms also helped create the digital North Atlantic in the movie “Titanic.” The unit is barely bigger than a thick sandwich and sells for $1,000. When one finger is scanned, the device has an error rate of 1 in 1,000. When two fingers are scanned--digits either from the same person or from two people--the error rate falls to 1 in 1 million.

This spring, the company plans to release a system with components the size of a quarter. That scanner can be attached to a key chain or installed in a computer keyboard or mouse, and will sell for about $320, said Tom Reilly, the firm’s director of software engineering.

IriScan, the New Jersey-based company that builds the system used at the Pennsylvania prison, is working on a smaller version of its digital eye-camera--in the $250 to $500 range--to allow operation of personal computers and to identify the user to others online.

Although facial thermograph machines go for about $55,000 and are relatively rare, industry analysts say entry-level fingerprint scanners soon will be selling for $100.

Such falling costs have made biometric devices attractive for even the most mundane security jobs.

An Australian supermarket chain has replaced its time clocks with fingerprint scanners made by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Identix. Cashiers and stock clerks can no longer sneak away during the workday and have their mate punch their time card at the end of the shift. The elimination of “buddy punching,” according to Identix, saves the chain about 2% in payroll expenses.

A step up from the time-clock applications are online uses, which allow, for example, anyone with a personal computer to conduct financial transactions without the use of credit card or identification numbers.

“For those who transfer millions of dollars to Zurich, you can wrap your iris code around it and make sure it gets there,” said IriScan’s Kelly Gates.

And while several U.S. and European banks are testing iris and other scanners that would be used to identify ATM customers, the Aussies already are using fingerprint systems to identify the armored-car guards who restock the machines with blocks of $300,000 (Australian). Should a guard be held up by bandits, he could place an alternate “distress finger” on the scanner, a predetermined digit that would open the machine but also trigger a police alarm.

The use of biometric devices then rises to the level of national security, with the CIA, FBI and NASA all controlling access to sensitive areas with retina-scanning devices.

But whether clocking in at a Woolworths supermarket in Sydney, Australia, or accessing the heart of CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., placing your finger or eye or other body part before a biometric sensor means providing a signature that is all but impossible to forge.

That is both the beauty and potential ugliness of biometrics. Although no fingerprint is exactly alike, the features that make each one unique are stored electronically the moment you place your finger on the scanner.

Electronically astute criminals, one argument goes, could download your biometric data and pass them on as proof that, well, the outlaws are you. Since the data are indeed yours, proving that the criminals are not you--but rather that you are you--might be absurdly difficult.

“If we thought Social Security numbers being pulled out of the trash can was a problem, just imagine what will happen if your retinal scan is pulled off the Internet,” cautioned Jon Golinger of the California Public Interest Research Group. “There may be some benefits for consumers. There might also be some very big costs.”

Fingerprint Information Encrypted

What is likely to be more problematic than criminals fencing biometric databases, skeptics predict, will be the inevitable computer glitches and accidental release of privileged information that take place when hurried employees at giant bureaucracies and corporations use imperfect technology. The map of your retina, they predict, will accidentally be filed with data on a customer who shares your name, or you will log on to the wrong Internet site and ship your fingerprint.

Randall Fowler, president of Identix, said such fears are founded largely on a misunderstanding of the technology and the purpose behind it.

“Transactions that used to be done people to people are now done people to machine,” he said. “How do you give the machine the ability to recognize the person? All we’re doing is allowing a silicon chip to look at that fingerprint and say, ‘By golly, that’s Randy Fowler.’ ”

Also, Fowler said, his machines, as well as most made by other manufacturers, do not store visual reproductions of fingerprints but rather mathematical models of those prints--which are then encrypted.

Mandating Security Measures

Assemblyman Murray’s bill, which has numerous supporters, could be voted on in about two months. It would require any organization asking for biometric data to install security measures to keep the data private.

Then again, the world has yet to see a computer security system that can’t be hacked by a computer geek with a full coffeepot and empty social calendar.

“It should cause all of us some concern that business or the government or anyone wants to take measurements off of our bodies, then put them into some database, and tells us not to worry,” said Valerie Small Navarro of the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’ve seen break-ins at the Pentagon’s databases.”

Of course, Californians, and many other Americans, already provide businesses and government reams of personal and even physical information. To receive a driver’s license in this state, you must proffer a fingerprint. Buying ammunition in the city of Los Angeles requires leaving a traditional ink-type thumbprint. Many banks have recently begun fingerprinting customers who don’t have an account but want to cash a check--a practice that state Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon) is seeking to halt with another piece of legislation, which, as a byproduct, would also outlaw digital fingerprinting.

“I know people are fed up with their privacy being invaded,” said IriScan’s Gates. “But if I’ve got your wallet and your credit cards and a couple of hours to figure it out--I’m you.”

Next to the door at his Silicon Valley office, Identix President Fowler has installed one of his fingerprint scanners. If your print isn’t in its memory, the door won’t open. But that doesn’t exactly make his office Fort Knox West. You want to break in? Back your car through the wall, or get a battering ram and break down the door. Pretty easy, Fowler readily admits.

“Security is like concrete: You buy it by the yard,” he said. “If you want 2 yards of it, you buy 2 yards of it.”

“Biometrics has undergone a normal gestation period,” he continued. “Its time has come.”

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Super Security

A new generation of security devices, such as the fingerprint scanning system, could soon replace keys and credit cards.

Finger ID: Scanning device keeps digital records of authorized users’ fingerprints and matches them to person seeking entry.

Facial Thermography: Infrared camera captures portrait of face and registers the different temperatures emanating from underlying blood vessels.

Iris Scan: The iris is one of the more distinct features of the human body. Scanner checks complex combination of its parts to establish patterns.

Sources: Biometric Identification Inc., IriScan Inc., Technology Recognition Systems