Are Pieces Better Than A Whole?
A centralized database of citizen information, validated by biometric marker(s) and used by a variety of government departments for a variety of purposes creates perverse incentives to criminal / terrorist elements.
The more biometrics makes a database trusted, the more it will be used. But the more it is trusted, the more value to a criminal/terrorist for spoofing it.
Will we then create an environment where only the professional bad guys can fake our identity?
Real world question: Is this what we want? Would we be better served with a central database vulnerable to a few, well-equipped bad guys or a series of smaller databases that relate to specific government functions that may be vulnerable to a wider class of (somewhat) pettier criminals?
June 12th, 2007 at 6:24 am
Why do you want a database of biometrics in the first place, rather than local trusted devices (like smartcards) that are unlocked using a biometric but that never transmit it elsewhere? You cannot place much trust in a remotely measured biometric without trusting the systems that make the measurement — including the people supervising those systems.