Biometric technology is now at work behind bars. Loved ones hoping to visit friends or family on the inside at many prisons are enrolled in a biometric system. A scan of their fingerprint gains them entry to the visiting hall, provided they are the right person in the right place at the right time.
The system does away with much of the paperwork concerning prison visiting orders. Various check points on the way into and out of the prison help to secure the process. So if a prisoner tries to escape with the visitor, it is instantly picked up and alarm bells are rung.
Day to day, the inmates themselves use biometrics at self-service kiosks to shop, check balances, order meals, make appointments and ask questions. These systems help to combat bullying between inmates, as a fingerprint and pin number are needed to authorise any transactions. Prisoners have the pin number printed on a badge in case they forget it.
Clive Reedman, project manager at Unilink, a supplier of IT solutions to the public sector, says: “An awful lot of prisoners now come out of prison and would be quite happy to use these systems at an ATM. They probably find it quite inconvenient to try and remember a pin number – perhaps they would be the best salespeople for the industry.”
Fingerprint recognition systems are also beginning to crop up in schools. They enable students to buy lunches and take out library books. Outside prison walls and beyond the school gates, the only other place where people are likely to encounter biometrics is at an airport. But here the take-up of the technology has faltered.
A recent report by the Commons home affairs select committee found that the £9 million spent on a biometric iris recognition system launched by the UK Border Agency in 2006 would have been better spent on providing more staff. The iris recognition systems at Birmingham and Manchester airports have already been switched off and they will only remain in use at Heathrow and Gatwick until the end of the Olympics this summer.
The report raised many issues about the use of biometrics. Questions were asked about what will happen to the data collected and about the way the scheme was used as a test-bed for its successor, the e-gate, which uses facial recognition technology.
The public’s unfamiliarity with biometrics is one of the reasons why the technology has failed to make much of an impact. According to
Dr Lynne Coventry, director of the Psychology and Communication Technology Laboratory at the University of Northumbria, the general public’s perception of biometrics comes from sci-fi films. “They have no idea how to use these technologies at the moment and no mental model of how they work,” she explains.
Then there are the privacy issues. People worry about the covert nature of biometrics and data security. In reality, many biometric applications do not identify users – instead, they flag people who have an entitlement to use a particular service. Reedman explains that many of these privacy issues stem from the idea of mandated systems that people have to use, such as the national ID card scheme. People object to having their fingerprints kept on a database that is out of their control but they will use a fingerprint on their own PDA because they are in control of their own data, he says. Coventry adds that the link between biometrics and the ID card scheme has muddied the water between verification and authentication, which has impeded the progress of the field.
Jim Slevin, transport business manager at Human Recognition Systems, says that privacy and data protection issues are a “black cloud over the industry”. He says these issues are repeatedly raised by customers procuring biometric systems, and it is a requirement for companies to deliver.
But getting the public on board with biometrics is going to take more than addressing privacy concerns. Promoting biometric systems as convenience tools may help. Reedman explains: “We’ve never really marketed biometrics as a convenience tool, we’ve always marketed it as a security tool, which is a big mistake. If you can log onto your computer without having to remember a password simply by using a fingerprint or by looking at it, then that might sell.”
Coventry says that a lot of the time the public do not see the benefit in security. “Users just don’t act securely. Unless they are forced to secure something they won’t necessarily do so. Plenty of people don’t set pins on their mobile phones, so we need to broaden the understanding of secure behaviour. It’s not just about biometrics.”
Slevin explains that much of the research into biometric technology, devices and algorithms is at a point of maturity, so now the focus is on usability. He adds: “In the last year usability has come right out to the forefront of the agenda.”
Fingerprint devices from different suppliers have similar levels of accuracy, but Reedman says the usability of these systems is vastly different. “The company on top for accuracy may come out in the middle or at the bottom for usability. We have to educate the customers to look at usability in relation to accuracy together,” he says.
Users will expect 100% accuracy and reliability from biometric systems, warns Coventry. “If they are using a fingerprint recogniser and it doesn’t recognise them they will blame the technology, then they will reject the technology,” she says. “We need to get the balance right so we are not putting them off when they first experience these things.”
To ensure reliability, systems must be tested with a wide range of age groups. One of the criticisms levelled at companies developing biometric systems is that products are not tested extensively enough with older people who may not understand the technology or use it in the correct way.
But Peter Waggett, leader of IBM’s emerging technology group, says that a recent project saw biometrics tested against a database of five million people. He explains: “That goes right across the board, and we have really dug into the differences that come out in different parts of the population.”
A problem facing researchers in this area is that their results often cannot be published because of the nature of biometric data. “There may be the perception that we are not looking into these things, but sometimes our clients will not let us reveal the results that we have got,” says Waggett.
This inability to share data means that there is a huge amount of repetition in the field. Each company must build its own research populations from which to get data, explains Human Recognition Systems’ Slevin. He says: “There is a real waste in the industry as it stands at the moment.”
Mike Fairhurst, professor of computer vision at the University of Kent and editor of the new IET biometrics journal, says that if everyone is doing the same thing then opportunities are being missed. Anonymising data could be an option, but the very nature of some biometric data makes this difficult. “If I was to publish your face, it’s a bit difficult not to have it attributed to you,” says Fairhurst.
To overcome this, academics should build relationships with companies such as IBM or the government passport office, which have access to large databases of biometrics, he says.
Fairhurst says that one of the key issues still to address is the ageing of biometric data. It is not fully understood how fingerprints and irises change with age. “Until we have databases that have enough information to sort these problems out we are always going to struggle. We’ll have to collect databases for 90 years,” he says.
Work is ongoing at IBM to understand any changes that occur to biometrics over a 10-year timeframe, so that systems can ensure that the person presenting themselves after a decade is the same one that had the document issued to them originally.
IBM’s Waggett says that smartphones and tablets will one day have biometrics included in them. Biometric applications will become “really valuable assets,”
he says.
These devices have the potential to thrust biometrics into the mainstream. Coventry says: “What we are seeing with mobile phones is people wanting all the apps combined into one device. I see biometrics being accepted on that because a lot of them are based on high-quality digital images.
“I see that being the future of the consumer market.”
According to Slevin, the finance sector could help to make biometrics acceptable. “The Mastercards and Visas of this world are already working on what will be the replacement for the pin. But the notion of all ATMs using biometrics is a long way off,” he says.
So when will biometrics suddenly be accepted? Reedman says: “Ten years ago I said this is the year of biometrics, and it wasn’t. If you were to ask me now I’d probably say in another 10 years.”
Focus on the passenger
Human Recognition Systems has deployed an iris reader system at Gatwick airport with a camera that can find a person’s face and home in on the eyes for photographing from a distance of 2m. Previously, the technology required the user to move themselves or the camera into the correct position.
The company’s Jim Slevin says: “Passengers don’t necessarily know that a photograph has been taken of their iris. They understand that a photo has been taken, but they don’t have to operate it.”
The company is working on systems that integrate iris and face recognition, so passengers can turn up at the gate and let the technology decide whether they should present their face, iris or passport.
Slevin says: “We must put in technology that is seamless and makes decisions in the best interest of the passenger. Why should we expect passengers in an alien environment to make these decisions?”