this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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We've had fingerprints in our ID cards for decades.
It's fine. Quite useful, really. Less of a totalitarian state now than when they were introduced, actually.
I know in the anglo world the whole national ID card thing is seen as intrusive, but it's kinda fine. I just know my number, which is great for some transactions, and I can get right by airport security without interacting with any humans just by tapping my biometric ID on a reader. Plus it can be upgraded to a full on digital signature certificate, although the implementation is terrible and I hate it.
Yeah, totalitarianism is kept in check by society being vigilent, not by hiding your fingers. This stuff can be put to good use (like making identity theft impossible, which is a huge quality of life improvement).
"Impossible" is a big ask, social engineering still works, and for light checks all you need is your publicly available number.
But "a lot harder" is nice.
Almost all the passports around the world include biometric as well.
How so?
If you see this symbol on your passport, it's biometric.
These passports are storing your fingerprint, iris scan and facial ID features. Very few countries don't use these kind of passport.
They do not store the features themselves. When the passport is made, a reader takes those features, makes checksums of them, and stores the checksums on the passport along with a signature to make sure they haven't been tampered with.
When you present the passport, another reader takes in your features and makes checksums of them. Then a computer compares the checksums with the ones on the passport, checks the signatures, and says yeah, this person is the one the passport was issued to.
None of this requires your features or your identity to be stored anywhere, it's done on the spot whenever needed.
There's other information on the passport (a unique identifier) that can be used to obtain other data about you if needed, but to tie the passport to you none of that is needed.