LONDON: Our bodies are being measured for critical comparison like never before. Biometric devices prevent gambling addicts from playing casinos and bar intruders from nurseries. And the border security of the western world could soon depend on an emerging technology that offers security solutions for a post-9/11 world tormented by fears of terrorism, fraud and crime.

Computerised examinations of our wrinkly digital extremities, the peculiar shapes of our faces and uniquely patterned irises will be used more and more often to authenticate our use of our passports, ID cards, mobile phones and laptops – as well as regulating access to offices and building sites.

The science behind the industry is advancing rapidly. Two UK universities – Kent in south-east England and Robert Gordon in Aberdeen – this year established specialist MSc courses in biometrics and security. False rejection rates – when machines fail to recognise pre-registered passengers or staff – are plummeting. But is there a danger that the ingenuity of these applications will outrun the capacity of this young technology? The moment of truth is about to arrive in the UK with deployment of the first major government biometric programmes: ID cards (initially for foreign workers) carrying fingerprint records will be launched next month, while automated immigration gates this summer began recognition checks on passengers carrying the new generation of passports arriving at Manchester airport. And next week, the biggest showcase for the industry in Europe, Biometrics 2008, opens in London (at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster, from October 21 to 23). A Home Office (UK ministry of the interior) minister and European police officials will participate. More than ever, businesses are under pressure to prove that the technology is both resilient and yet also politically sensitive.

A research paper produced for the show by Simon France of the University of Kent and the UK Biometrics Institute, confirms that systems are becoming more complex to foil spoofing attacks (where people masquerade as others) and to reduce the error rate. The trend, he says, is to employ “multimodal” biometrics – security systems that incorporate several types of measurements. British passports now carry chips recording facial recognition data but will eventually add fingerprints. “Liveness” testing, to prevent fraud or spoofing, is increasingly built in. Iris scans, for example, check that the image of a human eye is from a convex surface, is glossy and/or wet and that the muscles oscillate at high frequency.

There are still problems, France observes. “Having a laboratory-based solution is one thing, but achieving acceptable failure rates in the real world can be quite another. Transitory changes [illness, damage] or permanent changes such as ageing can cause identification decisions to become invalid over time. Equally challenging is the presence of varying lighting conditions, dirt or moisture.”

In facial recognition systems – which are slowly being integrated into CCTV networks – research is turning to the addition of 3D images to boost performance. A Dutch scientist, Dr Arnout Ruifrok, will discuss at the show the problem that current technologies have difficulty interpreting non-frontal images and even zoomed-in on faces more than four metres from the camera. Iris recognition – a British technology invented by Professor John Daugman, a Cambridge university scientist – is developing methods of reading the unique patterns in our eyes at a distance.

Its accuracy helps pre-enrolled frequent flyers pass quickly through congested UK airport security checks. It has lost out, however, chiefly because so many existing police and identity databases already contain fingerprint and photographic records.Voice recognition, palm prints and ear shapes are also being pursued for commercial development. The global biometrics market, according to a pre-credit crunch estimate by ABI Research, is worth around $3bn this year and will rise to $7.3bn by 2013.One measure of the improvement in biometric capabilities, according to Mark Lockie, editor of Biometric Technology Today and programme director of next week’s conference, is the US series of face recognition vendor tests, which for the past 15 years have evaluated the latest systems. With a false acceptance level set at 0.001, initial tests in 1993 returned a false rejection rate of 79 per cent. By 2002, the rejection rate had dropped to 20 per cent and by 2006 was down to one per cent.

“One issue that remains is the speed with which data can be downloaded from the computer chip [in UK passports],” he says. “Privacy is another matter. You can design biometric systems that enhance privacy. In the US, samples can be given for Aids tests along with fingerprints and collected by proving your identity without giving a name.”

The battle ahead for the industry may be more about gaining for social and political acceptance. The Conservatives say they will, if elected, ditch ID cards. Security agencies believe that to be effective, biometric records need to be matched across networks of international databases. Airport workers, on the front line of the new technology, remain to be convinced.—Dawn/Guardian News Service