Stewart Hefferman

Swindon UK

COO, TSSI Systems

There's no excuse for government uberdatabases – biometric ID cards can't be used as the justification! Although Peter's coming from the civil liberty perspective, from a technical point of view, there is simply no need to store biometric data centrally...UNLESS of course, the government in question is planning to extend their usage in future! Other countries such as France and Italy have stipulated that biometric information is stored only on the cards themselves – thus still within the possession of the individual. This is a perfectly workable solution, and prevents creepage.

One point of confusion though is whether biometrics is overestimated as a unique identification key. Really the grey areas come with identification rather than verification of an individual – in particular against a pool of millions – such as matching a face or fingerprint against a multitude. For verification, biometrics is the best bet today.