Friday, July 08, 2005

Biometric boarding passes?

According to Forbes (via Engadget) Lufthansa has started testing biometric boarding passes.
When checking in at the terminal, Lufthansa passengers' fingers are scanned and their fingerprints printed in encrypted form as a barcode on the boarding pass. During boarding, the code on the pass is then checked against the actual fingerprint to identify the passenger...
I don't understand the move towards biometrics, and I strenuously object to the use of RFID chips, especially when linked with biometrics. However, Lufthansa's approach here seems sound, if only we could be guaranteed that our encrypted fingerprints wouldn't be stored, cross-referenced and checked against any number of other databases. Which, of course, is exactly what will happen...

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