Towards Biometric Passports
The EU recently passed a bill to introduce computerized biometric passports which will include people’s fingerprints as well as their photographs. It joined a host of other countries which have taken similar steps towards increasing the security of their citizens’ identities.
Although the bill received tremendous support, there was opposition from some civil liberties groups towards the creation of a database filled with personal identity information. Their technical reasoning was that “Biometric passports are only as safe as the existing paper documents they will replace” and this will only give criminals a clear channel to travel once they have acquired false biometric IDs. Is that really the truth?
The whole idea for having biometric passports began in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks where having them would make it harder for the criminals to forge identification documents.
However, it is true that adding extra security to a system to cover some holes can at times expose it to other vulnerabilities. Biometrics takes a person’s identity which is unique and uses that to build a key. But this type of authentication becomes ineffective once attackers are able to impersonate biometric measurements. Let’s say that the user’s fingerprint is the “key’, and the attacker manages to impersonate it. Now we can’t even revoke the key because the user cannot get a new fingerprint. Also biometric authentication has the disadvantages where a number of false positives and negatives are generated. The article gives two examples where two innocent people in different events (a Madrid train bombing and a murder scene in Scotland) were falsely accused because their fingerprints were falsely identified.
An interesting point is made in the article where it is stated that if the emphasis switches to biometrics then too much use of technology would get rid of the ‘human element’ in the jobs of security guards. They would risk not observing if a person appears nervous or fidgets while passing through security which would otherwise be good signs that a person may be lying or committing something wrong.
The parliament rejected the proposal for children to carry biometric passports as for one their fingerprints change as they grow older and that makes it a less reliable form of identification. Since the passport based system is fingerprint-based in the EU, people with no hands would not be able to have such a passport and hence the bill will make them apply for a temporary 12 month passport.
We know that biometric authentication techniques can have disadvantages. So to have a more effective authentication technique, it should be coupled with another technique. This is called “two-factor authentication”. If along with a passport, they ask for some kind of a PIN or password that only the person knows, then the security process would be more effective. Also the article didn’t mention it, but if the biometric passports use Basic Access Control protection or Extended Access Control protection, then that would bring in strong encryption for the private data such as the person’s personal information and biometric measurements stored on the passport.
Article : http://pcworld.idg.com.au/article/273122
Comment by Heather
January 16, 2009 @ 9:00 am
According to an article (http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;1134426914;fp;2;fpid;1) from 2004 discussing Sweden and Norway’s adoption of biometric passports, these countries were not storing any personal information from the passports in accordance with a 2004 European Parliament decision that prohibits the creation of a central database containing biometric information. This measure limited the effectiveness of the new system by not allowing law enforcement to recognize criminal identities in an attempt to preserve civil liberties. This seems like an awfully expensive solution to simply making a passport harder to forge.
Biometric passports are obviously evolving, but it seems that the purpose is becoming less clear. In the case of Sweden and Norway, it was simply a matter of making it harder to forge travel documents. The recent EU adoption appears to be focused on personal identification as well as forge-proofing passports, but as both articles make clear, there are limitations and serious possible security hazards created by the introduction of this technology.
The goal is security, however, this solution seems like a technological fix that wowed politicians but missed the point.
Comment by liaowt
January 16, 2009 @ 10:43 am
For the biometric, the major concern is that once a fingerprint or other biometric source has been compromised, the users can never change their fingerprints or other biometric sources. As biometric
be used by more and more institution such as airport, bank…etc. If the user is not aware of the fingerprints being compromised, he/she
will lose a lot of her privacy information or money. It will also cause physical harm to the user.
I think the biometric verification can be used for
individual identity, but not a major access key.
As mentioned in this article, there should be other techniques to for two-factor authentication.
For example, as I enter America, I have to show them my passport and also verify my fingerprint. If someone get my fingerprint, but does not have my passport, they cannot pass it.
Comment by devynp
January 16, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
Right now, before a US visa is issued to an applicant, he/she is required to have his/her fingerprints taken. Then, when he/she foreigners enter the United States, not only he/she needs to show a Passport and visa, but a his/her fingerprints are also verified. This definitely improve the US national security.
A good reason of using technology to verify fingerprints is because, unlike human, technology never gets tired. Security guards might get tired after verifying faces of travelers, but machine’s ability will not diminish even after days (of course ignoring possibility of machine breaking down).
Comment by jap24
January 16, 2009 @ 9:29 pm
There is another problem with the EU passports. They use RFID chips to store and transmit the biometric data (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs). As that article mentions, the UK’s passports were vulnerable to being read by clever criminals (or at least, it was in 2006). Apparently, the key to access the data on the RFID chip was derived from information printed on the passport, which made it easy to find out or guess. The contents of the chip can in theory be read from a meter away, and the author of the article was able to read some from about 7cm. That data could potentially be used to make a fake passport, or for identity theft.
There are other possible vulnerabilities from the RFID chips. What if you wanted to track someone’s movements, and you knew that person would be carrying around one of these passports? It would be impractical to try to carry an RFID reader and try to stay within its < 1m detection range of the victim, but, if you knew where the victim was likely to go, you could leave RFID readers at those places around the entrances and find out where the victim has been and at what times.
The new passports might be more secure than the old ones from the governments’ perspective, but to me they seem to be worse for the individual users. Also, a more recent article (www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4467106.ece) shows that they might not be the fool-proof IDs the EU governments want them to be.