Use of passport biometric data matching causing false negative matches
 

One of the under-covered realities when it comes to biometric passports is that the the biometric capture and/or biometric data storage for passport chips can be compromised/messed-up from the start too and thus make things like immigration/passport control on entry and/or exit more messy.

All it takes is a people, process or technology failure of sorts when it comes to biometric capture and storage of biometric data for passports, and then the user of the biometric passport -- a passport that otherwise may appear to be a valid biometric passport issued properly to its bearer -- can face problems of sort at passport control or elsewhere due to additional biometric data capture not matching up with the presented passport's previously captured biometric data.

For example, there are at least a hundred thousand currently valid EU passports where the fingerprint data stored on the passport chips will automatically fail to match requested fingerprint scans of the passport bearer's fingerprints. Cause: right-hand fingerprints got stored as left-hand prints or left-hand prints got stored as right-hand prints.

For some strange reason, I do not find this the least bit surprising......

And the following is just Denmark for fingerprint mess-ups. :eek:

Fingerprint errors found in over 200,000 Danish passports ? The Post

My bet is that it is indeed true that the vast majority of such passports with biometric data flaws have been used and generally used without issue.

If so, then of what value are biometric passports?

They satisfy governments ever-hungry for more data on their citizens' movements, even if said data is wrong.

They enrich government contractors and their pet politicians.

This is a key reason I don't like this kind of technology. There's way too much ignorant misplaced faith in 'databases' and zero common sense, no matter how obvious or egregiious the error.

Mistakes happen and when it's obvious there's an error, the government should make it a top priority to immediately hand-walk a solution through the system.

That has a very easy fix. You put your left-hand finger when requested the right-hand and vice-versa. Or you design a software that checks the fingerprint versus both right- and left-hand prints.

I'm sorry, but is making a storm in a teacup. If that is the real problem, you check a given fingerprint against both right- and left-prints and if one is a match, you have a positive identification. Not that difficult.

That doesn't fix error data on and for a biometric passport and the passport's user. What you suggest as a workaround may at times provide a workaround for a person who knows of an error subject to avoiding a negative match by way of your suggestion, but there are times when the workaround for a biometric capture/storage error won't work or may cause additional problems for the user of a biometric passport that can yield false negatives of sort for the user of the passport.

Here's another article on the subject:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/0...zhnvfp-5XJO7rs

This is exactly what happens in SIN - going in they scan both thumbs, coming out you press only one - whichever you prefer.