Fingerprint Privacy
There have been a slew of stories lately about fingerprint readers being tied into payment mechanisms. I don't particularly like the idea, but if you do, feel free. At least until your lack of care about privacy starts displaying externalities. Many of these vendors are making claims like
it is not possible to recreate the fingerprint from the stored templateHowever, as Ross, J. Shah, and A. K. Jain, "Towards Reconstructing Fingerprints from Minutiae Points," that just ain't so. You can reconstruct fingerprints from minutae, and they both describe and demonstrate that. Which is to say, the biometrics vendors who persist in making these claims are either ignorant or liars.
Andy Adler points out in "Images can be Regenerated From Quantized Biometric Match Score Data," you can do the same with faces. Adler's technique is very different, using the server for repeated queries. Cryptographers would call that an oracle.) Adler was also kind enough to respond to a query about fingerprints with a pointer to Ross, Shah, and Jain's work. The Adler paper was pointed out to me by Daniel David Walker. And finally, the fingerprint is from Chir.ag.
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» more on biometrics from Thinking WiKID Thoughts
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