The next three titles about cops with fingerprint scanners
Wired reports that “UK police are now using fingerprint scanners on the streets to identify people in less than a minute”. I have a feeling that the next three titles on the same topic may be something like these:
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<a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-police-handheld-fingerprint-scanner-database-biometric-security" target="_blank">Source: partial screenshot of the original article at Wired</a>
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- “Cybercriminals attack UK cops to copy fingerprints (*) from their scanners”
- “This dishonest cop sold the whole police fingerprints database to the Mob”
- “This radio receiver is all you need to get all the fingerprints that cops collect with her scanner. You just need to be close enough to them”
For the record, I’m not saying that these devices are evil incarnated and should therefore be destroyed, period. Maybe, maybe not. That’s another question. I am just very curious to know how the whole general idea has been tested against certain scenarios, and how it deals with them. More exactly: how it supposes the authorities should deal with them.
(*) yes, they very likely won’t be “pictures” of ones fingerprints, just “digital signatures” of those pictures. I really hope so, at least. But even in that case, they may be “misused”.