In brief, it works by using a mobile fingerprint reader and a GPRS connections to compare two index prints against the national fingerprint database. Legislation in the UK permits the holding of all fingerprints taken after arrest.

The database compared against is the national fingerprint database (IDENT1) containing prints of all convicted criminals and those of a whole bunch of other folk that have at some point been arrested and subsequently released. Suspects do not have to comply with the request for their fingerprints since there is no such legislation relating to the period before arrest. However, I imagine that refusing to give your prints is likely to convince the officer that it is worth the risk of arresting you.

So, on the face of it, this looks like an excellent application of fingerprint biometrics for identification and thereby saving police time. Currently, they are only used to identify the occupants of vehicles that have been listed, say, for not being taxed or having been stolen. I expect we will see these mobile units deployed much more widely in the near future for other identification needs in the field.

These are the personal opinions of Consult Hyperion and its guests and should not be misunderstood as representing the opinion of its clients or suppliers. To discuss how any of the technologies discussed in this post can benefit your business, please contact Consult Hyperion.

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Each time in the past when we have specified smart ID cards (e.g. Amex Blue, Hong Kong ID card, etc) they have been based on existing standards but have had to have been largely bespoke because of the absence of relevant application-level standard specifications for the kinds of things required of these cards. This has been bad for the ID card schemes and their users, because limited use is guaranteed due to the lack of standard ‘Points of Use’ that can recognise the cards.

So why am I so positive about next year?

Well, October 2006 happens to be the deadline set by President Bush for all US Federal staff to be issued with smart ID cards. Over the last year or so since the mandate was issued, NIST has been working on a standard known as FIPS 201 for a Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card that fills all the missing gaps in the standards. This includes an accreditation and interoperability testing programme for supplier products before they are allowed on the approved products list. http://www.secureidnews.com/library/2006/06/09/ssp-competition-heats-as-vendors-align-to-issue-certificates-for-new-piv-cards/

Due to the large number of card and associated systems to be procured, suppliers will be bending over backwards to have their approved. It will only be a matter of time before this US standard becomes accepted elsewhere, simply because it covers the requirements of most ID cards and there will be multiple interoperable sources of supply.

In short, PIV promises to be the EMV of smart ID cards. I am reliably informed (Scott Guthery, Mobile Mind) that there are already four approved card implementations, two for MULTOS and two for Java Card.

These are the personal opinions of Consult Hyperion and its guests and should not be misunderstood as representing the opinion of its clients or suppliers. To discuss how any of the technologies discussed in this post can benefit your business, please contact Consult Hyperion.

The post 2007: the year of the smart ID card appeared first on Tomorrow's Transactions.

My front door bell rang, I bounded down two floors of stairs to get there in time to find a delivery man from SMS (Secure Mail Services that IPS uses to deliver passports). Having signed, I took delivery of my seven-year-old son’s replacement passport.

Back upstairs I opened the envelope to discover that he has been issued with a biometric passport, complete with smart chip and antenna embedded in a page at the back. When we get back from Turkey, I’ll take it straight to our lab in Guildford for testing. Last time I did something like this, I found something surprising

A few hours later the same day my son’s cancelled passport was returned by regular mail with its cover corners snipped off. I’d been required to get him his first passport when he was one year old and before the ICAO photographic regualtions applied that disallow smiling, hats, wigs and false moustaches. I couldn’t help notice how much happier he looked when he was one and how much like a criminal he looks now that he is not allowed to smile for the camera.

I was reminded of the Biometric enrolment trials that UKPS conducted for the Home Office during which I was issued a smart "this is not an ID card" card and was told that its chip contained the biometrics that I had just enrolled (images of face, fingerprints, irises). To prove it, they allowed me to verify myself against one (and only one) of the biometrics. I chose face because I know that this works least well and requires controlled lighting conditions to work at all. It went "beep" and my facial image appeared on the console. "There we are, you’ve been verified" I was told. I was sceptical. I took the smart card back to our lab for interrogation. It turns out that there were no files stored on the chip at all!

These are the personal opinions of Consult Hyperion and its guests and should not be misunderstood as representing the opinion of its clients or suppliers. To discuss how any of the technologies discussed in this post can benefit your business, please contact Consult Hyperion.

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