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Salvador gives thumbs up to smart cards
El Salvador has introduced a biometrics-based national smart card program to check the identity of Salvadorans applying for driver's licenses or renewals. Since January 1999, when the program started, 40,000 drivers have registered at motor vehicle offices, with 400,000 expected to enroll over the next two years, says Identix Inc., the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based biometrics vendor on the project. The system works by scanning thumbprints for each applicant, which are stored in a national database. The same prints also are stored on the smart card, along with such data as the applicant's physical characteristics and a photograph. When a cardholder inserts his card into a reader at a registration office, the information on the chip is compared with the information in the database to authenticate the cardholder. Identix says the biometrics technology has a false acceptance rate of one-tenth of 1%, a false rejection rate of less than 1% and a failure to enroll rate of 2%(6/22).
I don't recall seeing this before.
John |
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