Fingerprint I.D. chips

An AC sent in this: "AuthenTec's scan gathers information from radio frequency signals bounced down to a live layer of skin. Those signals return to the fingertip-size chip where a tiny array of antennas take the feedback and chart out peaks and valleys, yielding a three-dimensional "sculpture" of even the faintest fingerprint."

Many other chips do similar things

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many similar chips that do the same thing - check out Fingerprint Cards [fingerprint.se] for example. "Some cells emit electrical signals, which cause extremely weak electrical charges to be placed on the papillary pattern of the fingertip and on the sensor plates. Other cells sense the electric field pattern or capacitance pattern beneath the entire sensor surface, creating a three-dimensional electrical image of the unique papillary pattern"

This is cool. :-)

[tzanger]

I have been designing systems with this chip for several months now. Except for their damn standalone modules which don't have the CTRL_OUT/ signal routed to the pin these chips are Very cool. They make a smaller USB version as well.

The even cooler part is that their standalone module uses a DSP and external Flash -- you can read out their templating algorithms and use them in other systems!

Re:Fingerprint ID's

[norton_I]

Everybody should take heed of what Bruce Schneier has to say about biometric identification. Basically, biometric identification provides excellent identification, but no authentication. Everybody knows that you should use the same password for your ATM pin and slashdot, but what happens when your password is you thumbprint?

Biometric identification might be useful for identifying yourself to a bank teller (or any other human) that can verify that you are present, not acting under duress, and not attempting to foil or bypass the scanning device.

It isn't adequate security for ATM's, computers, or other automated systems, especially for authentication to remote computer systems, where there is no concept of a trusted client.

Re:As Privacy goes down the drain....

[Happy Monkey]

That's true of passwords as well. I guess it may be slightly less difficult to match a fingerprint with a name than it would be to match a userid with a name, though.
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As Privacy goes down the drain....

[acvolt]

I can see this technology helping to eliminate identity theft, but whoever owns one of these chips can tell exactly when and where you used it and could keep records.

Fingerprint ID's

[House of Usher]

I think that it's definitely cool that you're able to track people this way, but I guess for me it's more a concern of who has this information. It goes back to Big Brother essentially, which I really dislike.

For those of you that think that I'm a loser for not willing to get a little implant, look at the alternative with computers like those made by Acer. Their top of the line, business laptop requires a thumb print verification before it will let you use the machine. Talk about cool, no more roommates messing with my machine :-)