Photos: Biometrics up close and personal
Summary: Accenture believes biometrics are an 'intrinsic part of the future'. ZDNet UK visited the company's French labs to get a closer look at the identity technology
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The machine checks the eyeball is alive by measuring minute pupil dilation and contraction in varying lighting. The Home Office plans to introduce biometric identity cards and begin biometric enrollment in the UK by 2008. "Accenture is following the UK ID card debate with interest," said Bataller.
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Talkback
For ID cards to be useful they need to match your iris scan with one on the proposed UK National Identity database (say 30 million people) at least when the card is initially issued (or you could be fraudulently applying for multiple cards).
When matching against a database of 30 million even a 0.001 failure rate is unacceptable and I suspect the failure rate is far greater when you are picking a match from a database of millions, not just confirming that the iris scan matches the single one held on the card.
On a technical level alone the proposed UK ID cards will be a total failure but I'm sure accenture (and EDS) will make a good few billion from it.