Biometrics

Biometrics

Biometrics is “a branch of biology that studies biological phenomena and observations by means of statistical analysis” (Dictionary.com WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University). In other words Biometrics is the study of the human body natural identification, now a days corporations use biometrics instead of a simple code. Also police and other federal and worldwide associations use biometrics to stop criminals and to keep track of where criminals are and who they really are. Biometrics has been around for hundreds upon hundreds of years, from when the Chinese first used it to identify children with footprints, to the more advanced salinity recognition that has been developed for today. The use of Biometrics and the technologies that have come from it has made security much more advanced, but it’s getting to the point that maybe even the technology of Biometrics is intruding our privacy.

One of the first known cases of humans using biometrics to identify one another was by early Chinese merchants. Joao Barros, wrote that the Chinese merchants used the first noted form of biometrics by stamping children’s palm and footprints on paper with ink. By doing this, the Chinese solved a way to tell apart young children from one another. This is one of the earlier of not the first noted case of the use of Biometrics; it is still used today when children are born.

Though biometrics has been used throughout the world it never became a popular practice until a man named Alphonse Bertillion decided to fix the problem of identifying convicted criminals. The problem with identifying criminals that were captured again was that the criminals often gave different aliases each time they were arrested. This would keep them from receiving the larger sentence for being a repeat offender. He realized that even if a criminal changed his name, cut his hair or put on weight, certain elements of the body wouldn’t change. This led him to form a method of measuring the more noticeable parts of a person’s body, the parts of the body that never changed during their life such as the size of the skull or the length of their fingers. This system was called anthropometrical signalment and was very basic in its accomplishment. Whenever a person was arrested they were sent through a series of tests that recorded the length and distinguishable marks of their bodies. This was all recorded on a card and filed away in groups with similar test results. Whenever a new criminal was brought off of the streets, instead of taking down their name, the authorities would take fingerprints and see if the prints were already in the system.

Biometrics has come along way; it started off with the finger and footprints. Later on it was discovered sometime in the 1950’s that DNA was a better solution for Biometrics testing. “The discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid, more commonly known as DNA, has been the foundation for much scientific work. This fundamental discovery was credited to James Watson and Francis Crick” (elvis.engr.wisc.edu Heather Kane “Who discovered DNA”). It was only a matter of time after the discovery of DNA that something better would come along to help Biometrics, but was it imaginable in the 1950’s that technology would revolutionize the way we catch criminals and lock our doors, simply by the sound waves of our voice or even from the odor of our bodies.

Fingerprint recognition is the most widely used biometric technology and is well known for its association with law enforcement and the world of entertainment. This technology is very reliable and accurate, and even though it was discussed before, this form of fingerprint technology is far beyond the old ink and paper. Now a days corporations use fingerprints to access their vaults and high security areas, such as labs, or even board rooms. Police and other authority associations use this fingerprint technology to keep an even better eye on criminals, who they are, even if they are being held in another prison. This fingerprint technology is a worldwide data base system; the finger is placed on a scanner of sorts. This scanner reads the lines in the finger, the ridges, and loops of thumbprints. It then stores the identity of the person on a data base so if the same finer print is brought up someplace else accessing the database,