The Cleverest Card of All
Business Life (British Airlines), February 1997
Traditional magnetic-stripe credit cards satisfy two main criteria: what we have (a plastic card) and what we know (a personal information number - PIN). But magnetic-stripe cards are headed for oblivion because of a third criterion: who we are. This is called biometrics. Your hand, nose, eye, ear, or any number of other body parts can be measured, databased, and stored for future reference. Biometrics linked to smartcards means vastly greater accuracy in personal identification.
By comparison, the standard magnetic-stripe credit card — never a proper smartcard — is the class dunce. The stripe remembers little and does nothing with it. Even the modest “stored value’’ telephone card is brainier.
Advanced smartcards contain an embedded microprocessor chip which “is capable not only of storing data, but also carrying out a high level of security using encryption and biometric techniques”, according to Richard Poynder, Chairman of the Cambridge-based professional association, the Smart Card Club. “The cost to manufacture these cards is relatively high but decreasing. Magnetic-stripe cards have been subject to a large amount of counterfeiting, and smartcards are seen, particularly by banks, as an effective method of eliminating this growing problem.” The chips in state-of-the-art smartcards disable themselves if they detect attempts at counterfeiting or other hanky-panky.
Smartcards are in fact so secure that in France, where they replaced ordinary credit cards several years ago, credit-card fraud had dropped from hundreds of millions of francs per year to virtually zero. And the sudden slimming of the pickings has not escaped the attention of the French crook. “France has exported credit-card fraud to neighbouring countries,” observes Poynder.
Electronic purse
A different type of smart card is a multifunction electronic purse, and it promises to be a boon to workers the world over. To get onto your morning bus or train, you walk through a barrier without even removing the card from your wallet or purse. A device at the barrier automatically reads your card. ‘With this same card, you can then buy a newspaper (no more fretting if all you have is a large-denomination note; no carbon for you or the retailer to handle, for a thief to copy your details from). If your card is running low on credit, pop it into a compatible telephone and download more moolah. You can also make ordinary phone calls with these cards. Other potential frustrations can be cut down to size as the technology is extended to vending machines, parking meters, launderettes, photo booths, and many other small-change situations.
Swindon, an industrial town between London and Bristol, has been experimenting with the Mondex smartcard since 1995, and the trial appears to be a qualified success. According to Mr Frederick Leppard, manager of Dillons newsagent in Gorse Hill, some ten miles from the town centre, “I haven’t had a Mondex customer for a long time, and I myself prefer cash because there’s less paperwork.” After 18 months, cash cards have almost no impact on his business.
But Stephen Williams, manager of Boots the Chemist in central Swindon, is an enthusiast. He finds that “although the level of usage is not as great as we anticipated, maybe one per cent people are resistant to change, and I expect it to increase.”
In his experience, “customers using the Mondex card are very comfortable with it and my staff like processing it. As a retailer, and as a consumer who uses it myself, it’s great in those circumstances where it’s always difficult to have the right change, like car parks and bus fares. Mondex is certainly safer than carrying around cash. As a retailer I was initially apprehensive but it’s as quick if not quicker to process than ordinary credit cards, and after this trial period it will get even faster when the regular equipment replaces the special kit. You don’t have to wait while someone signs the receipt, which eats up a great amount of time. Personally, I feel safer using it, especially with the lock facility in case I lose it or it’s taken from me. If I drop my wallet containing £50, I’ve lost the money, but not with the Mondex card if it’s locked. And I understand that if the card is turned in, my bank can read the chip to locate the owner."
Top level security
But what if it’s your job to protect a president or prime minister or monarch (not forgetting the 1982 incident in which an intruder breached Buckingham Place, located Her Majesty’s bedchamber, and enjoyed a cosy if brief chat with the Monarch)? In other words, what about circumstances in which even a smartcard is too dumb?
Many of our anatomical features are, like snowflakes, one of a kind. The outlines of our palms and the vein patterns below the surface of our skin are ours alone. Our voices and finger lengths are also distinctive. Signatures can be forged, but the way we write our signatures (the amount of pressure, the angles and slants and rhythm) can’t be precisely duplicated. The shape of our ears, and the inner workings of our eyes, even our body odour is unique —and measurable. Sophisticated equipment takes highly detailed readings, converts the findings to computerised data, and stores it for subsequent identity checks.
Eye to eye
Fingerprint recognition, hand geometry and iris scans are already in use, although all biometric processes are constantly being refined. In this field, a success rate of one false acceptance or false rejection in a thousand, or even in ten thousand, is not good enough, and one goof per hundred thousand (99.999 per cent) is minimally acceptable. A facial-recognition camera might be able to see through makeup and around a large hat, but how effective is it in poor light or if the subject moves or doesn’t face the camera directly? Will a fingerprint detector know whether the finger it is detecting is attached to an actual, live person? Will eyeball photography be acceptable to the public at large?
Privacy
Doctors are concerned about confidentiality if health histories are stored in chips. Politicians worry about privacy and civil liberty issues. Retailers want to know how much all of this will cost (the answer is plenty, but the savings are vast too), and if they’ll have to install more than one card reader. Furthermore, many people yearn more for the simplicities of yesteryear than for the gadgetry of tomorrow. There’s nothing like very very high tech to bring out the Luddite even in those of us who are generally enthusiastic about t new technology.
Virtually thief-proof
Most if not all of these obstacles will be surmounted, one way or the other. Biometrics is coming, and for the simple reason that it really works, be it at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics or an ordinary Automatic Teller Machine (ATM). In countries throughout the world, intellectually-gifted smartcards are enjoying success as passports, welfare identity cards, and drivers’ licences, and in office buildings, courthouses, prisons, and hospitals. They prevent jail break-outs, as when inmates exchange identities with prisoners scheduled for earlier release. They exclude from maternity wards people intent on “borrowing” someone’s else’s infant. If a true “cashless” society is a pipedream, a less-cash society is truly coming; coupled with credit cards which are by and large useless to thieves, this will mean greater safety and convenience for all. Business travellers will be among the more immediate and prominent beneficiaries.
Loopholes
Claims of a safer world should not be overstated. For the time being, expensive and extraordinarily sophisticated technology has thwarted various malefactors, but the bad guys usually manage to catch up. Asked why he robbed banks, notorious American bank robber Willie Sutton supposedly replied, “because dat’s where dey keep da money”. If plastic represents ever increasing amounts of lucre, that’s where the thieves will continue to be drawn. Barriers tend not to be as thief-proof as advertised. Determined crooks usually find a way in. Or they find another country.
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How They Do It
Forget Hollywood.
Today’s fingerprints have little to do with black ink and everything to do with geometry. Fingerprint readers
capture approximately 3,000 measurements along a one-inch tip of the finger. These measurements are converted into a three-dimensional model and compressed into a mere 25 bytes.
Say Cheese
That’s all that is needed for infra-red laser scanning equipment to capture your image. The camera is especially sensitive to unique features such as veins and bone structure, is not distracted by hats or eyeglasses, and is happy to work in the dark. You don’t even have to be perfectly still.
Don’t blink
The technology depends on the part of the eye under investigation — the iris near the front, or the retina at the back. One kind of reading is obtained by a simple lightbulb device which records the amount of light absorbed by the retina. Another requires face-steadying equipment and a video camera to capture a black and white image of the eye.
Smell factor
The strongest perfume can’t hide our chemical-based body odour from a detector applied to the hand. Alternatively, a fibre optic sensor —in effect, an electronic nose — uses dyes which change colour as they detect different odours. Don’t hold your breath, as this technology is still very experimental.
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E-GADS! DO YOU KNOW YOUR EEEES?
Coming to a neighbourhood near you (if not already there): new vocabulary for the new Millennium.
eCash (also known as eMoney) — electronic dosh stored in a plastic cashcard.
ePurse — plastic credit-card-like cards (a.k.a. cashcards) storing eCash.
eWallet — not the male equivalent of an ePurse, this is actually a piggybank-like device (it looks like a pocket calculator) allowing cashcard users to download eCash from their own hoard, or to transfer cash from one card to another.
e-Ticket — the soon-to-be-launched (spring 1997) British Airways ticketless express check-in system for passengers with hand baggage, a credit card (ordinary or smartcard) and a willingness to use a touch-screen to obtain their boarding pass. Passengers with hold luggage, and those who prefer the traditional check-in procedure to the self-service variety, can still check in at a desk.
eNose — a biometric body-odour sniffer.
ePlasticide — the act, usually performed with scissors or other sharp instrument, of committing homicide on a credit card.
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