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I found out last week that one of my colleagues caught hand-foot-mouth disease from his toddler, and it scarred his fingerprints, causing problems with US Immig
by KMag 3y ago
I found out last week that one of my colleagues caught hand-foot-mouth disease from his toddler, and it scarred his fingerprints, causing problems with US Immigration And Boarder Patrol's stored biometrics for him. Yes, this particular system uses faces instead of fingerprints, but I was very surprised that such a common infection could (in rare cases, I presume) mess up your biometrics.
Net-net, shifting toward biometrics is good, but there are some very sharp corner cases.
Also, my toddler still has trouble telling my infant identical twins apart. I could see one of my identical twins denied boarding because "Sorry, but you're already on the other side of this security gate. If you'd like us to review this decision, please send registered mail to the nearest trash receptacle."
Edit: I almost forgot about my own travel facial recognition failure two weekends ago. United has some system that scans your face at the check-in counter, and uses facial recognition in lieu of scanning your boarding pass at the gate. I entered one gate. It didn't even seem to recognize there was a face there. The gate agent told me I was standing too close, and told me to back up. She then told me to try the other gate. Then she asked me to stand aside and she manually scanned my boarding pass. To be fair, I used to get the same response at bars when I was single. (I joke, but this really happened to me that a facial scan from a few hours prior wasn't recognized at the gate.)
- teeray 3y agoAs a result, I'm sure "updating your stored biometrics" is such an alien impossibility to these agencies because they have completely bought into the myth that your biometrics never change.
- scarface_74 3y agoClear just updated my fingerprints and Face ID last week. I’m sure TSA can do it to
- hedora 3y agoHow do they prevent phishing / identity theft? This sounds like the worst of all tradeoffs: - Your credentials are public - If you want to change them because they were cloned, you need to undergo surgery - There’s a non-surgical path that allows an attacker to replace your credentials with theirs
- scarface_74 3y agoI mean you act as if they have to store your fingerprints as a clear image. They match your fingerprint and then your picture is displayed on the screen and you have to scan your boarding pass.
- a_gnostic 3y agoYour fingerprint is stored as a number. The camera identifies repeating patterns, similar to a QR code, which reads like a number. You wouldn't even need a print, if you could spoof the right sequence.
- phpisthebest 3y agoThe uniqueness of fingerprints is also disputed by many, and I also suspect the accuracy of these new facial technologies... too much money, too little oversight for me to trust them
- krisoft 3y ago> uniqueness of fingerprints is also disputed by many But, who cares? Security at the scales the TSA operates at is not an absolute but probabilistic. What they can do is lower the possibility of accidental mismatches to some acceptable level, and to increase the cost for an attacker. That is all they can do. And they have to do this at scale with acceptable externalities. Yeah, finger prints are not 100% unique, neither are they 100% foolproof, so what?
- phpisthebest 3y ago>>so what? When it is a government agency preventing my free unrestricted travel I think we should have a higher standard and a better response than "so what" There are 2 options here, 1. They fail open meaning "security" is compromised and thus pointless 2. They fail closed meaning they will violate the rights of citizens to freely travel or place undue hardship on them because their systems failed putting the traveler through additional "screening" neither should be acceptable to anyone that values a free society
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoI locked myself out of fingerprint unlock for something like a week on several devices after a limited amount of cleaning with citric acid and a scrubbing pad. Fingerprints need fallbacks.
- xvector 3y agoThe fallback is your password
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ycombinatrix 3y agoWhere can I set my TSA password?
- ceejayoz 3y agoThat'll be your passport. Annoying, but there's absolutely a procedure for unmatched biometrics.
- a_gnostic 3y agoSo just use passports? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> just use passports? If it ain't broke, don't fix it Anyone who travels in America and doesn’t see security as broken has been visited by the patron saints of patience.
- a_gnostic 3y agoAny miscreant wanting to cause the greatest mayham, could easily target TSA waiting lines, yet this never happens… Almost like the threat isn't as high as it is portrayed to be.
- m463 3y agoI always remember bricklayers don't have fingerprints. (also me apparently - when my fingers are wet)
- JohnFen 3y agoI've gone through several periods where I had no fingerprints (and probably will again), as a side-effect of some hobby project or another.
- matthewmcg 3y agoInstant glue got you too?
- hedora 3y agoHigh quality superglue is removable with a “debonder”. Here’s an example product: https://bsi-inc.com/hardware/un_cure.html https://bsi-inc.com/hardware/un_cure.html
- JohnFen 3y agoNo, CA is no problem. It's usually about prolonged use of mild acids, prolonged handling of rough materials, that sort of thing.
- adrr 3y agoI worked with a woman that didn't have fingerprints. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adermatoglyphia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adermatoglyphia
- someplaceguy 3y ago> The disorder was informally nicknamed "immigration delay disease" by Professor Peter Itin after his first patient had trouble traveling to the U.S. without any fingerprints for identification. Thank you for the chuckle, Professor Peter Itin!
- scarface_74 3y agoThe TSA has mechanisms for that already. I have fingerprints. But because I have Cerebral Palsy that affects my left hand, it’s almost impossible for me To stretch it out to get good fingerprints. TSA can bypass it and just say “missing fingers” with a note. When I had to get my fingerprints rolled at the police station for a background check, they also have a standardized form
- crooked-v 3y agoI've anecdotally heard that lifelong chefs can also end up with no or unusable fingerprints after repeated burns and extensive calluses.
- dizhn 3y agoOperators of industrial equipment and machines such as welders usually lose their prints over the years too.
- more_corn 3y agoI worked with a Nepali cook who had no fingerprints. It was from continuous burning. He would also reach into a colander propped in boiling water to pull out and plate pasta. He was so desensitized to pain that he was not careful of the cooks around him. The guy to his right requested a shift transfer because he kept getting burned.
- mrb 3y ago
- RajT88 3y agoI was pouring concrete a bunch this past summer for a project around my house. Even wearing gloves, the concrete wore down my fingerprints to a smooth texture (and I had scabbed over wounds in spots too, thankfully no scarring). My fingerprint readers on my devices didn't work for much of the summer.
- wrycoder 3y agoI'm old enough that my fingerprints have largely worn off. My Air M1 won't recognize my index finger, and my thumb is 50/50. At least my iWatch mostly works, when it isn't complaining that the wifi is too weak (because I'm not holding my wrist in the correct orientation).
- CobrastanJorji 3y ago> Net-net, shifting toward biometrics is good I disagree. It's a disclosable but non-revokable authentication mechanism. If your fingerprints leak, there's no way to revoke them. If your fingerprints change, like with your friend's kid, you'll find that the systems are not designed to handle updates. It's an ID that you cannot discard but might accidentally ruin.
- kulahan 3y agoIMO it needs to be something that can't change, like your basic DNA, or something to that effect. We definitely do need a better way to positively identify people.
- ycombinatrix 3y agowhy? that's horrifying for privacy
- kulahan 3y agoPrivacy is a new-age luxury that causes more problems than it's worth. I know this is unpopular, and I'm not justifying the abuse of information, but it changes nothing about the fact that we are by-and-large a social species, and being able to positively identify someone would likely have more benefits than drawbacks, because our society is organized around the idea that we know who we're working with.
- KMag 3y agoand also a problem for my identical twins. I just realized we thought we were being a bit cute by giving them names that meant the same thing, but in different languages. Now, I realize that if they translate their names into written Chinese, they better be phonetic translation... if they end up with identical names, same birthday, identical DNA, that could cause problems.
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd how is this any different than currently using your photo ID and someone looking to see if the ID matches your face? You would still have the identical twin problem
- scarface_74 3y agoNo one is proposing using biometrics exclusively. There is always physical id as backup
- wholinator2 3y agoWell not yet. The world has done dumber things before
- j45 3y agoBiometrics at most should be a username with consent, not a username+password pair for this reason.
- nindalf 3y ago> my toddler still has trouble telling my infant identical twins apart What does your toddler have to do with this? Is the toddler in charge of getting the infants through TSA?
- KMag 3y agoI know facial recognition algorithms and human facial recognition work wildly differently. However, the two faces are similar enough that several months of training, with some ability to choose perspective, isn't sufficient for my oldest to be able to distinguish the twins. In order for me to be confident which of my twins I'm looking at, I need a view at least 30 degrees off center from the left side to get a clear enough view of the subtle difference in the shape of the top of the left ear. I'm not confident a one-shot algorithm can reliably distinguish them without also sometimes believing one of them is two different people.
- alistairSH 3y agoI almost forgot about my own travel facial recognition failure two weekends ago... I ran into the same problem with British Airways at Heathrow a few years ago. Face was scanned at initial entry point, then failed at the gate during boarding. After a few tries at getting the system to match my facial scan from a few hours prior, the gate attendant gave up, had me stand aside, let everybody else board, I got on dead last. Thankfully my wife's face matched, so she got on and managed to keep a spot in the overhead for my baggage.
- sofixa 3y ago> United has some system that scans your face at the check-in counter, and uses facial recognition in lieu of scanning your boarding pass at the gate. I don't think it's an airline thing. I've had the same at LAX boarding an Air France (codeshare with Delta) flight, and it seemed to be all over the place there.