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Friends, Romans, Shoppers: Lend Me Your Ears
Identity technology is still very much in the news this week, with a British scientist speculating that we should use ears as a way of identifying people.
Professor Mark Nixon of University of Southampton told BBC World Service's Outlook programme that ears do not change much as we get older, unlike other body parts.
Funny. I thought ears and noses continued to grow for your entire life -- the reason old people have such big ears.
The "big-eared old people" theory is quite contentious, however, and not near resolution. I'm just waiting for the CSI episode in which somebody says, "we have no idea what he looks like, but have you seen a pair of ears like that around here recently?"
As I pointed out earlier, I'm all for multiple biometric measurements for ID technology. In fact, multiple readings seems the only way to go: the more the merrier.
Congress is looking into protecting you and your identity, with some new laws. Just what we need -- new laws.
The core issue is that using the SSN is simply not a viable way of identifying someone. Once again, a multiple biometric device hard-wired into the OS would solve many of these problems, with a insurance bond tied to the hardware, that would ensure consumer acceptance.
I think I can be more clear: it's not that the SSN system is broken. It never worked. We've got to get rid of the entire concept and move to a large multibiometric key system -- probably several kilobytes or megabytes -- associated with our identity. This will be a federated system, and vendors have been clamoring for years to put the pieces together, like this new announcement. It's almost ready to gel. Give it a couple more years. Part of the problem is that we're still talking about "logging on" and "identity verification". In the future, we're all going to be "logged on" all the time, so such terms may actually hamper the discussion instead of moving it forward.
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