World's Largest Biometric Database 117
An anonymous reader writes "In the last two years, over 200 million Indian nationals have had their fingerprints and photographs taken and irises scanned, and given a unique 12-digit number that should identify them everywhere and to everyone. This is only the beginning, and the goal is to do the same with the entire population (1.2 billion), so that poorer Indians can finally prove their existence and identity when needed for getting documents, getting help from the government, and opening bank and other accounts. This immense task needs a database that can contain over 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs, and 2.4 billion iris scans, can be queried from diverse devices connected to the Internet, and can return accurate results in an extremely short time."
And people in the US bitch about a national ID (Score:1)
Your social security number just won't cut it in the future.
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I already have this service, although it's not the government.
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Typical AC moron. Didn't get the joke, and took it way too seriously in a complete non sequitur direction. Sleep well, idiot. Maybe the brain cell fairy will visit you and leave a clue under your pillow.
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Re:And people in the US bitch about a national ID (Score:4, Funny)
When has that ever stopped them before?
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already happening checkout the realID law... it is a data sharing and standardization for DMVs across the country.
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A few ideas come to mind:
1. Pastebin doesn't have anywhere near the space needed to paste these
2. Pastebin doesn't have fingerprint, iris, faecal sample support (yet?)
3. Even if you did expose the entire database, it would still be useless without write access to alter the data - so you can claim to be somebody else.
Number 3 is also a case for every nation that issues ID cards or biometric passports today. But only the government has any access to the database. I.e. it's not sold to 3rd parties for marketin
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faecal sample support
(yet?) What did you mean by that ? Please explain.
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This is not an index.
Sure anyone can tell you that 0001010101010101001 = 0001010101010101001
Now what if I tell you that 110010101001010101 has an extremely high score towards being the same person.
Your lil dBase index is currently scratching its head.
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I was going to suggest something along the lines of saying hashing the data, but then I realized you want to scan someone's iris and then compare that scan in the database.... Hashing won't work here. DCT would likely work, but is sloooow, the more I think about it the more I realise this is not an easy problem, though really it is if you change the problem:
Every person gets a GUID. They present the GUID as their ID. You query the DB for the GUID and submit their iris scan as the authenticator. You don
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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. if the result is .90 or better it is likely your person.
So what you're saying is, with a copy of the database I could impersonate 1 in 10 people in India. How... very... secure. Point of note: People's irises change over time, unlike fingerprints.
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Uh, I don't think so.
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No there wasn't. My number is lower than yours is. If you want something to be modded funny, it actually has to be funny and NOT take too damned long to read.
I have to agree on one thing though, many more people will MOD you down just for disagreeing, which I don't quite think is too cool. In any case the "Funny" MOD does not really help your karma at all.
And yes I do read at -1 and yes I read both of them that we slightly different. We'll it was a good troll. You got a reply at least.
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Maybe so, but I can't read minds unfortunately.
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Surely having a record of all digits and eyes ensures that a person can be identified even if they lose a finger or an eye.
Re:12 billion finger prints? (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus when they start finding duplicate fingerprints, they're going to need to check more than one finger.
This is a good idea in a way because it should resolve the question of how common fingerprint matches really are.
Re:12 billion finger prints? (Score:4, Informative)
This is a good idea in a way because it should resolve the question of how common fingerprint matches really are.
This is the best piece of text Slashdot had to offer in quite a while. High five, insightful internet person!
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Indeed, fingerprints are not unique.
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This was covered before. IIRC every 6000 or so prints you'd get one match. Or some really low number.
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Actually Fingerprint is only a secondary search in India. Iris is the primary form of identification. They actually do face as well although it's not really used.
Indian's have a big problem with missing fingerprints (lots of manual labor leads to worn off prints) so in their case very much yes Fingerprint is not a good identifier.
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Usually it's all 10 fingers and palms too so 12 x 1 billion people = 12 billion prints. Easy.
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Exactly, but some organizations also use everything including DNA. I'm guessing India is using all 10 digits and both palms to come up with that number. Thumbs are good to have as many prints will be those.
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Thumbs are good to have as many prints will be those.
Thumbs are good to have not just for identification but to allow us to tie our shoelaces more easily and handle knives and forks, etc. Also press the space bar on normal keyboards. Not just thumbs, but opposable thumbs.
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We believe fapping isn't in your top 3. Sure we do.
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More thumb prints seem to be around crime scenes maybe?
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> I'm guessing India is using all 10 digits and both palms to come up with that number.
Which number they came up with? The 12 billion fingerprints? That is, the (1.2 billion Indians) x (10 fingerprints per person)? That number?
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I'm assuming that maybe there are that many babies that slip through the cracks. I dunno what age they fingerprint at but I bet they get a palm printd too.
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We are just using all 10 fingers... 4-4-2 slap scanners... we authenticate via a single finger
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Maybe so, security around here gets the palms too.
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It is actually important to capture all the fingerprints because you do not know which finger will be the best over a period of time. Often the best finger for transactions ends up being the little finger since it is the least likely to have damage or get worn off over time.
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Plus the real cost of the system is having to capture all the data in the field. The incremental cost is minimal to capture 1 vs 10 and the improved de-duplication and long term viability of the system is improved by capture all.
This is hardly news (Score:3)
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What is news is that we have crossed the 200 million number and should by the end of next year cross the 600 million unique person enrolled. It has been a fun project to be a part of...
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Just stay on topic for once.
On the plus side... (Score:3)
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When the system breaks, at least getting connected to tech support in India won't seem like such a bad thing...
They will probably outsource tech support to Liberia or Sierra Leone.
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Or worse, Kentucky.
Imagine how frustrating it will be for those indians as they listen to barely literate hillfolk stutter out stilted strongly accented hindi read from cue cards.
Iris scans change (Score:1)
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/28/3046726/iris-patterns-change-over-time-research
"The biometric iris recognition scans used at many security checkpoints may be less reliable than previously believed, researchers at the University of Notre Dame have found. "
UIDAI Website (Score:5, Informative)
Twelve digits, eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
They'll run out in a few centuries, and then what?
Next time, go hexadecimal from the start.
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Outsourcing (Score:2)
Where does India outsource /their/ IT jobs for managing things like this database?
Re:Outsourcing (Score:5, Insightful)
Where does India outsource /their/ IT jobs for managing things like this database?
Erm, the United States. We're the world leaders in the manufacture of sophisticated mass-surveillance and tracking technology. It's our other major export besides financial know-how, bombs, and working-class misery. The NSA is building a data center right now to track every packet of data sent within the borders of this country. And we don't just store biometric hashes -- W're taking complete, high-resolution imagery of our citizens bodies and keeping them on file. The kind of surveillance and tracking we do on our own citizens make this look like a high school science project.
There's no reason to think we wouldn't happily help the corporation of India... er, I mean, the country of India (sorry, I'm American.. it's hard to keep corporations and governments separate).
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To be very specific: The 3 consortiums involved are US, US, FR as far as the tech goes. Each consortium includes a few different companies all of which, I believe, include some local talent for support / logistics and some code.
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Messed up 3rd world country - needs this! (Score:2, Insightful)
India is a messed up 3rd world country with too much corruption and too much of losses to the middlemen. For example, discounted food supplies sent to the poorer sections of the society are misappropriated by the distribution stores. Very small percentage of the poorer population has bank accounts or even an identity card of any sort, or often times even a birth certificate. ( so think of trying to do something in the US without a state id.. or ssn!)
Yes there is a chance that this will get hacked - but this
No Electrophoreses? (Score:3)
What if you get severely burned and then have no irises, fingerprints, and your face looks different? They should be incorporating DNA too.
Re:No Electrophoreses? (Score:4, Funny)
But what if you change your mind?
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> But what if you change your mind?
Thank $deity I wasn't drinking anything at the time I read your answer.
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You can bet that is coming once DNA sequencing gets cheap enough. The excuse will no doubt be crime fighting, as the police sometimes have DNA but no match.
Actually, Apple and Google must be closely behind (Score:2, Troll)
Biometrics are not just fingerprints: Apple's Siri and whatever imitation was made available for Android do one thing very well: they export a pristine, digital quality voiceprint with owner details to the US every time they are used.
It's the second largest successful intelligence intercept ever - the first one being WhatsApp and iMessage tapping what was formerly harder-to-get SMS traffic..
kinda creepy... (Score:2)
Irises Change Over Time (Score:1)
It was recently reported that Irises actually change over time. This begs the question of how accurate this data will be in 5 years? 10 years?