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Friday 18 April 2014

What Will You Do When You Can No Longer Buy Or Sell Without Submitting To Biometric Identification?

The Truth

In some areas of the world, payment systems that require palm scanning or face scanning are already being tested.  We have entered an era where biometric security is being hailed as the “solution” to the antiquated security methods of the past.  We are being promised that the constant problems that hackers are causing with our credit cards, bank accounts, ATM machines and Internet passwords will all go away once we switch over to biometric identification.  And without a doubt, we have some massive security problems that need to be addressed.  But do you really want a machine to read your face or your hand before you are able to buy anything, sell anything or log on to the Internet?  Do you really want “the system” to be able to know where you are, what you are buying and what you are doing at virtually all times?  Biometric security systems are being promoted as “cool” and “cutting edge”, but there is also potentially a very dark side to them that should not be ignored.

In this day and age, identity theft has become a giant problem.  Being able to confirm that you are who you say that you are is a very big deal.  To many, biometric security presents a very attractive solution to this problem.  For example, the following is a brief excerpt from a recent Fox News article entitled “Biometric security can’t come soon enough for some people“…
In a world where nearly every ATM now uses an operating system without any technical support, where a bug can force every user of the Internet to change the password to every account they’ve ever owned overnight, where cyber-attacks and identity theft grow more menacing every day, the ability to use your voice, your finger, your face or some combination of the three to log into your e-mail, your social media feed or your checking account allows you to ensure it’s very difficult for someone else to pretend they’re you.
Almost everyone would like to make their identities more secure.  Nobody actually wants their bank accounts compromised or their Internet passwords stolen.  But there is a price to be paid for adopting biometric identification.  Your face or your hand will be used to continually monitor and track everything that you do and everywhere that you go.  Here is some more from that Fox News article…
Friday, we made Ryan King the most verified man in Brooklyn.
“Verified,” a fingerprint-recognition device chirped back at Ryan after he placed his finger on the reader.
“Verified,” a facial-recognition device said to Ryan after scanning his face.
Ryan works at the American headquarters for FingerTec, a Malaysian company replacing PINs, usernames, and typed passwords with fingers and faces we don’t need to memorize.
“You can’t copy someone’s fingerprint unless you chop it off,” Ryan said, “which wouldn’t work because it has to be attached to a hand.”
For now, biometric security is not being forced on people.  If you want to avoid it, you can.

But eventually, once it has been adopted on a widespread basis, banks and government agencies will start requiring it.

And it is easy to imagine a day when none of us will any longer be able to buy or sell anything without submitting to biometric identification.  In fact, an “alternative payment method” involving hand scanning is already being tested in southern Sweden

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