Its seems it’s over with ‘Aadhar cards’ and its now biometric cards trending in Indian governmental activities. Biometric cards are supposed to store the biological information of the each individual citizen for national safety and personal security. This information can be used not only to identify individual identity of a person but also can be used in the case of emergencies.
If “what is this biometrics thing? “ is the question still hanging over top and wanted to know how data is taken and implemented, let’s throw a look below,
Overview
Biometrics is the science of identifying individuals using physical characteristics and behaviors. Examples of physical attributes that may be used for such purposes include using a person’s fingerprints, hand geometry, iris or retina, facial characteristics, voice pattern, or even body odor. A person’s DNA can also be used to uniquely identify him or her, but this is a more invasive process and requires a skin, tissue, or blood sample. Behaviors that can be used to identify people include computer keystroke dynamics, walking patterns, and how a person responds to a standard set of questions.
Biometrics has been around in nascent form since the 19th century, when police forces first used fingerprinting to identify possible criminals, and automated biometric technology was pioneered by defense agencies in the 1970s using voice-, iris-, retinal-, and fingerprint-scanning equipment to allow or deny individuals access to restricted sites. In the late 1990s, however, biometric hardware became a commodity that even small companies could afford, and biometric authentication is starting to become widespread in corporate networking environments, in the banking and financial industries, and in government.
Implementation
The most popular biometric technologies at present are those used for fingerprint identification, iris scanning, and facial recognition. In general, any biometric system consists of three parts:
● A high-resolution scanning device that can be used to acquire an image of a person’s physical characteristic and digitize it
● A storage system containing a database of digitized images of authorized individuals
● A computer system running image-processing soft-ware that can compare the acquired image with the database to recognize a match
In a typical biometric fingerprinting system, an individual places his or her index finger on a silicon sensor acting as a capacitor that is continually charged and discharged. The sense uses the ridges on the person’s finger to generate an image of the fingerprint, which is then scanned at high resolution and converted into digital form. The scanned image is transferred into a computer using a universal serial bus (USB) or serial connection, where image-processing software compares it with a known database of digitized signatures. If a match is found, the system can be used to generate an authentication token that allows the individual access to the computer, network, or building controlled by the system.
Issues
When automated biometric technologies first appeared in the 1970s, many people expressed concerns about their privacy being invaded by having digitized information about their physical characteristics stored in government databases. Others have argued that biometrics actually protects peoples’ identities against the rising crime of identity theft. Biometric systems are not infallible, and while few people now argue with using biometrics for authentication purposes, civil rights advocates often argue that face recognition systems in public places such as airports are an invasion of privacy and that false positives may lead to harassment by air-port authorities. In the post-9/11 world, however, the momentum for increasing use of biometric screening is likely to continue and grow.
0 comments