You are confusing this technology with a different type of technology.
It is true that the FBI maintains a massive amount of fingerprint data for criminal justice purposes. When a suspect is fingerprinted on a tenprinter (costing tens of thousands of dollars), the images of his fingerprints are compared to millions of images in West Virginia in the AFIS system and, if there is a match, he can be identified even though he attempts to maintain anonymity. I guess you could call that an invasion of his privacy, although the law would not recognize him as having privacy rights in that situation.
What you have in the authentication system is something entirely different. There is no large 'identification' database. Instead, there is an identified template, which you voluntarily created at enrollment in the system; the template is probably only associated with a particular password, instead of your name. It may be held in a server somewhere, or it could -- sometime soon, we hope -- be held on the smart card you carry in your wallet or purse. In either event, when you present yourself to the biometric device, it has no idea who you are. You need to key in your password. The device then communicates with the part of the system that has your password/template and asks the simple question: "Does this new biometric scan match the biometric information associated with the password just provided?" If yes, the transaction goes forward. No one has 'identified' you; the system has only verified you as the proper holder of a password.
Get it? |
