this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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Ultimately, there are too many databases with people's fingerprints out there, and my expectation is that they're gonna leak at some point.
So that means two things:
First, don't use biometrics to check identity unless you're in a position where a person forging them can actually be checked for forged biometrics and get in trouble if caught. Like, customs at an airport, where you could see if someone has fake caps on their fingers or something. Biometrics cannot normally be invalidated. If it leaks and you're using the fingerprints to authenticate yourself to, say, your laptop or your bank or something, you can never invalidate those credentials, and people will always be able to get into your bank account. Specifically in the case of fingerprints, it's often not even that hard to get ahold of a specific individual's biometrics -- you leave a record of them on any smooth surface that you touch.
Second, if you're in a position where you don't want to leave behind a signature, you might want to wear something that masks biometrics. If you have widely-leaked biometrics databases floating around that anyone can get access to, and you, say, put your hand on something, you've just left a signature that anyone can map to identity. Maybe bring back gloves, say. I don't think that we're at a point where there are systems that can do iris scans at a distance without someone knowing. Facial recognition is definitely doable at a distance, and that happens today. People at political protests who are worried about being identified, some military people, stuff like that, will mask their face. Maybe it makes sense to roll back anti-mask laws if facial databases are gonna be floating around. I dunno about gait recognition, whether that's sufficiently-unique to distinguish among a large number of people at a distance.
A "database of fingerprints" would only contain checksums. They can be used to verify the result of a reading but not to get the whole print.
Most of the time they don't even contain that. The primary checksum is stored only on the ID, which outputs a secondary one, which is matched against a verification checksum produced independently by a reader.
The national database doesn't need any of those, it holds the person ID numbers and their civil status and stuff like that not how they are verified.
that's the case for fingerprint readers in phones/laptops
But does that also apply to prints collected for government ID cards?
Most probably, for several reasons:
Good to mention that (in the Netherlands) when you've provided fingerprints for a new identification card, the fingerprints are wiped from any system after you've received the card, remaining only on the card itself.
I didn't know that, but that's nice.
Now how do I dispose of the card once it's expired? π€
Over here you hand it over when you pick up the new one and it gets physically marked (a corner gets cut, typically) to prevent it being used as a duplicate.
Or you can shred it.
That doesn't get rid of the markings on it, which could still be used.
It doesn't. But it's a personal ID card, You can also lie about having lost it and get a replacement.
All security is mitigation. There aren't a ton of uses for a second expired ID of yourself in any case. It's not like an old timey passport where you'd see someone in the movies physically changing the photo and expiration date. This thing is printed right on the plastic with hard to reproduce security measures similar to paper money.
Probably this is an EU-wide law, because my east-leaning country says this too
Same in Germany. But I wouldn't be surpised at all if wiretapping agencies like the NSA manages to get most of the data anyway. Then again, the same can be said for phones which are supposed to only keep the data on the device.
Last time I used my mandatory ID for a public transaction I actually had to use a webcam and held the card up to it and then my face so a human could check them.
Turns out, in a country where these have been in use for decades some people have put some thought into it. Go figure.
Of course now we have real time deepfakes and that is again obsolete, so we'll see where we go from here. I hope I don't have to bring my meatsuit to an actual office for routine tax transactions again, because that sucked and this is better.
Yeah, I'm saying that unironically. Depending on the transaction you're trying to make it can require a digital certificate you acquired previously in person, but it can also be human-verified in real time by checking your ID and matching it over videoconferencing.
The person checking my ID would have had to check my ID if I went to the office in person, too. Because, you kmow, they were gating my accessing my own private data. So remote human verification isn't "invasive", it's literally the same thing we would have done in person without the hassle of going to the office, which helps people who can't move around easily and during the pandemic it also kept everybody else safe.
It's fascinating how consistently the anglosphere assumes identifying yourself is an attack rather than a service. My ID has just as many protection features as my money, and that's how I want it, because my ID gates people being able to act in my name and access my records in a number of ways. Reliable, universal ID is a feature, not a bug.
Eh... I think now you're having an argument with somebody in your head.
I don't care how you wank, friend. Wank away.
I showed my face over a webcam next to my official ID to access tax data or medical records. I sure expect identity to be verified for those things, on site or remotely. If your government is not checking your identity to access your private data, how the hell is that working? If you don't think the health care system should keep your medical records or the tax system should keep your tax records, how do you think those services can work?
Is this one of those things where you got angry about a thing once and now there is no room for nuance or compromise on it online? Because I get that people think privacy is important, but maybe it's time to just say out loud once that "privacy" doesn't mean "nothing I ever do leaves a trace anywhere, ever", which is an absurd statement.
Could you explain what non invasive methods exist? Really would like to hear them.