If you thought that in 2016 we collectively fell through a time rift into a horror and suspense movie worthy of Tela Quente, you're probably disappointed with the start of 2017. We went from a Jason movie to a documentary about the consequences of World War II, where walls are raised and cultures wiped out. The impression we'll leave for future generations depends on how and how much we accept responsibility for our actions, because, as Wendell Phillips said in 1852, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
With each passing day new technologies are created, and innovative methods for infiltrating them as well. Recently, a video was released in which researchers at Japan's National Institute of Informatics managed to “lift” people's fingerprints, using only a photo in which the individual in question had their fingers exposed. Minority Report (2002) or Black Mirror (2011), it's getting hard to decide which of the genres is shaping reality in the purest “life as a reflection of art.” To better understand the importance and relevance of this new (illegal) way of (maliciously) acquiring the unique traits that guarantee a person's identity, let's first understand how long fingerprints have been used and for what purposes.
Leia também: Security: Biometrics and the Digitization of Identity
Story
The first uses of fingerprint biometrics as a means of identification have been linked to prehistory, more specifically in Babylon. In China, artisans pressed their fingerprints onto vases as a way of associating their identities with their work and, consequently, with posterity.
However, even before its real use was confirmed with scientific evidence as to the legitimacy of this means of validation, the act of pressing a fingerprint was already used as a form of commitment. In the English colonization of India, Sir William Herschel, based in the Hooghly district, had his business partners press their fingerprints onto contracts in addition to signing them. He believed that such an act “would frighten off any and all thought of repudiating the signature”.
It was only in 1903 that fingerprints began to be collected systematically to form a database to make it easier to identify criminals, in New York. Two decades went by, and the FBI's Identification Division was created by the American Congress, establishing the practice once and for all as valid and efficient in identifying prisoners as well as fugitives. By 1946, the FBI already had more than 100 million fingerprints manually recorded on identification cards.
These days, this identification system is completely automated, cutting operating costs and time when it comes to investigating suspects involved in crimes. The Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) was created in Japan in the 1980s, making life easier for the authorities and complicating the plans of chronic wrongdoers. Beyond the widespread use of this technology, biometrics can also be performed with other parts of the body – any and all that have a unique system and structure.
Learn more: Biometrics in the Real World
enrollment process
When it comes to the registration, analysis and validation of biometric processes, they are alike in that they use the same structure, regardless of the part of the body used. This is because these systems are accessible, quickly analyzed databases, which makes it easier to prove the identity of the person in question. The processes consist of:
Capture
The first stage is the recording itself of whatever will be used to prove identity. In other words, it's the process of placing your finger on the reader; repeating “house”, “hammer”, “dog”, “beach please” or anything else that technology requires. The system may ask you to repeat this process if the capture wasn't faithful or clear enough.
Extraction
Extraction is the stage where the collected data is translated into information identifiable by the system used. Each system has its own translation method, varying in terms of reliability and analytical rigor to turn the image or file into bits the machine can understand.
Pattern Creation
This part is where the magic happens. After translating the information into computer language, the system itself creates a unique pattern for that record, according to the characteristics the biometric system can recognize. This part is the initial format translated into the final format for storage; in other words, it's the synthesis of the image as a whole (when it comes to eye biometrics, for example) into a pattern the system can easily access, reducing the overall analysis time.
Comparison
After the recording and the creation of the pattern, the comparison is made to prove how efficiently the system registered the necessary information. If the system comes back with identification failures – or even false positives due to the low quality of the information collected – the process is redone until the comparison returns coherent and reliable results.
