Ears Might Be Better Than Fingerprints For ID 135
An anonymous reader writes "A new study says that outer ear could be better unique identification mark in human beings than finger prints. 'When you're born your ear is fully formed. The lobe descends a little, but overall it stays the same. It's a great way to identify people,' said Mark Nixon, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton and leader of the research. Nixon and his team presented a paper at the IEEE Fourth International Conference on Biometrics and using an algorithm identified people with 99.6 per cent accuracy."
An anonymous reader adds a link to Wired's story on the same conference presentation, which adds this skeptical note: "'I have seen no scientific proof that the ear doesn’t change significantly over time. People tend to believe notions like these, and they are repeated over time,' said Anil Jain, a computer scientist at Michigan State University who was not involved in the study. 'Fingerprinting has a history of 100 years showing that it works, unless you destroy your fingerprints or work in an industry that gives you calluses.'"
earprints (Score:5, Funny)
Re:earprints (Score:4, Funny)
... when you listen to the tumblers on a safe!
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Oh, come on. Even a hundred years ago, criminals used stethoscopes for that.
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I know it was a joke, so this is for the benefit of the mod who thought it was insightful:
1. Safes don't have tumblers (unless they're keyed safes, in which case you don't need to listen for anything).
2. Putting your ear against a safe is a terrible way to hear the wheel packs through mostly solid steel.
3. Safecrackers rely on feel more than hearing.
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Yup... it's always dangerous to try to be funny. The correcting comments, however, are often informative. Thanks!
BTW: I will bracket my silly and inaccurate comments with [JOKE][END JOKE] to provide more clarity.
Cheers
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Yup... it's always dangerous to try to be funny. The correcting comments, however, are often informative. Thanks!
BTW: I will bracket my silly and inaccurate comments with [JOKE][END JOKE] to provide more clarity.
Cheers
That'll likely get you a +1 Informative.
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Think of all the false positives if you drop your ear necklace.
earpics at the airport ... (Score:2)
This is not for identifying prints at crime scenes. Rather, for IDing all those gazillions of terrorist folks who waltz into the US as tourists every day. So add pictures of your ears to the thumbprints and facial photos that are taken when you go through customs.
"I'm sorry, sir, but we cannot take a picture of your ears in this condition. Here's a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a box of Q-tips. Please clean them up, before we can let you into the "Land of the Free" . . . of ear wax.
"Um, sorry to bot
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Good point, but check your math - 900,000,000 *0.4% = 3,600,000. Same conclusion, though.
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but then our error rate is made up of the sum of false positives and negatives...
now of course there are less terrorists than innocents out there, but you would expect that 3,600,000 to include some false negatives as well.
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What you described is the classic difference between sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV). Sensitivity is a basic characteristic of a test, in this case 99.6% (Actually the TFA mentioned accuracy, which is a bit different, but let's not nitpick). PPV tells us what is the chance that a positive result (in this case, an ear match), is a true positive. Since the equation is TP/(TP+FP) (TP True positive; FP - False positive), it is affected by how common (or rare) the trait we are looking for is in
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Consider checking airplane passengers against a no-fly terrorist ear list: ~900,000,000 passengers/year x 0.4 error rate = ~36,000,000 false positives/year. Totally useless
You could have stopped at "Totally useless".
No fly lists are a joke.
If a passenger passes all the screening and has no weapons, and there are no more than one of them on the flight then let them fly.
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You can have my potatoe when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
- Dan Quayle
fify (Score:2)
You can have my potatoe when you pry it from my colde deade handes.
Um... (Score:2)
1) Quayle was ridiculed for changing the correct spelling (potato) from a five year old to "potatoe" and was lampooned by every comedian in the US for it. He was the first loser of "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?"
2) He was never known to spell cold with an "E", although it does match the spelling of "potatoe"
3) "Potatoe" and "Colde" would make sense in a "spelling rules" thing; most words with a long vowel at the end sylable end in "e" to show it's a long vowel; potato and cold are two exceptions. "De
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Whooshe .... and I'm oldeer than you.
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I'd imagine it would solve a signification portion of all those unsolved damsel-tied-to-train-tracks cases.
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That's not my ear.
How can you prove it?
I had a pencil behind mine.
Don't answer the phone! (Score:2)
how often do you leave earprints at the scene of a crime?
You know the joke of the blonde with a burned ear? The phone rang when she was ironing her clothes.
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And don't forget Toulouse-Lautrec!
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No Time Toulouse!
I mean... no time FOR Toulouse. But save the Monty Python reference for when they discover that no two pairs of legs match.
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Yeah but how often do you leave earprints at the scene of a crime?
Never. I keep my earmuffs right next to my gloves and crowbar, in my burglary man-purse.
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Actually ears DO change, at least in size. Bone doesn't grow after adulthood, but cartilige does, which is why geezers all seem to have big ears and noses.
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Bad news for Criminals! (Score:1)
Re:Bad news for Criminals! (Score:4, Funny)
Vincent Van Gogh would beg to differ with you.
Re:Bad news for Criminals! (Score:5, Funny)
and Evander Holyfield.
When was first contact? (Score:2, Funny)
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begun influencing our culture...
Yes, the two cultures have become earily similar.
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Influencing? Dude, they've taken over. You see all thoue neckties? They're ALL Ferengi. The necktie was invented on Ferengenar.
Seems silly (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean no biometric ID is ever likely to be 100%. What you are just changes over time so even if we could measure it perfectly, there has to be fudge factor built in. Then there are situations like wins and so on.
However, that's ok, it doesn't need to be perfect. Biometrics shouldn't be security on its own, it should be in tandem with a passcode and/or a key or the like. The idea isn't that any of it is perfect, of course not, just that trying to successfully break more than one is really hard. Like if a door just has a passcode, well then what someone has to do is find out a legit passcode and use it. Not too hard in theory at least. However if that passcode is tied to a fingerprint, well then that is a problem. Even if it is only 99% accurate that means you have to find the 1 person in 100 that will work with that particular passcode. That is near impossible.
The big problem with biometrics at this point doesn't really seem to be accuracy but spoofing. Now that isn't as large a problem as it may seem since it isn't like getting a fingerprint from someone and making a replica is the easiest thing in the world, but it is a much bigger problem than accuracy. So unless this method is much harder to spoof, I don't really see how it matters that much.
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Now that isn't as large a problem as it may seem since it isn't like getting a fingerprint from someone and making a replica is the easiest thing in the world,
How many of your fingerprints exist on your laptop right now?
How difficult can it be to lift those well enough to get past the cheapest bid fingerpring scanner on the laptop? (I picked on laptops because that is where I'm always seeing the fingerprint swipe used. Right past the full disk encryption.
--
JimFive
Cheaper Solution (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Cheaper Solution (Score:5, Funny)
"Genitalia are not known to change over time"
Are you saying all those 'Get a bigger Penis' mails aren't telling the truth?
Say it ain't so!
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It ain't so!
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Mine seems to change from minute to minute.
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Cigar > Cigarette
Pecker > Peckette (or Peckerette)
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Once they make sure there are no bombs around your pecker (or peckette)
I think the polite term is "clitoris".
For what purpose? (Score:2)
If you want to identify a user for a locked system, is an ear going to be harder to fake than a fingerprint?
If you want to identify the perpetrator of a break-in, is an ear likely to be an identifiable leave-behind?
I don't understand who they are proposing would find significant advantage to this.
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Enter the Mythbusters...
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Well, given how amazingly easy fingerprint scanners are to fool(at least the ones mere mortals have access to), it couldn't really be a whole lot worse than fingerprints for a locked system.
That said, despite the obsession with using biometrics to provide some sort of security magic bullet, they're really substantially less secure than pretty much every other security mechanism we have. They seem to be astoundingly easy to fake, and it's not like you can just go and get another one every couple of months to
I beg to differ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you ever seen people with jewelry that stretches their ears in a significant ways? What about wrestlers? Some of these peoples ears bare little resemblance to what they did when born. Now granted people can burn their finger tips and do all kinds of other crap as well, but this kind of mutilation is usually intentional as compared to the examples above (yes... I know people can lose fingers to a saw too...)
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That is why the government wants you to come by every 6 months for a new set of ear prints, finger prints and phone and financial records. ;)
That's to keep their we'll-make-damn-sure-there-is-nothing-left-for-you-to-hide-database accurate
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Ears change even without injury or "body mod" efforts. The quote in the summary dismisses this rather abruptly, but cartiledge continues to grow throughout the human lifetime, so our ears do change in both shape and size over time (as do our noses). Whatever shortcomings fingerprints might have as tokens for identification, they do not have this problem; the patterns remain the same from birth until death, and somewhere around adulthood they also stop changing size. Ears do not.
Cauliflower (Score:5, Insightful)
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FTFY.
Fingerprint destruction (Score:5, Interesting)
> unless you destroy your fingerprints
Having inadvertantly taken my fingerprints off one hand at one point (yes, it was VERY painful, thank you), and found (as many others have) that they grow back... can you actually damage them so bad/repeatedly they don't grow back, and still have things like, erm, fingertips?
Re:Fingerprint destruction (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. The basis behind fingerprints is that as long as the regenerating tissue at the bottom of the skin layer remains alive, it will eventually regenerate same prints. However when damage extends to the deepest layers of the skin, the fingerprints are altered permanently. This is achievable via:
1. Physical trauma. When potential damage extends below the regenerative layer of the skin, your fingerprints end up altered.
2. Skin grafting: for example after heavy burns to your hands that require skin to be replaced fully. This will change your fingerprints.
I suspect that trauma that took your fingerprints off was a surface trauma of some sort, that only removed your prints temporarily, as regenerative layer of the skin remained alive.
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I know I have picked up a number of scars on my fingers in my line of work which I do not want to result in a 3 hour delay at an airport. Saying that, ears are no better, for I have a chunk out of my left ear from a rugby injury.
One of these days they will come up with a better method of identification, until then, I think
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One of these days they will come up with a better method of identification, until then, I think it would be better for all if we could learn to start trusting each other again.
Printf ('Are you a terrorist?');
Scanf ("%s", Answer);
If Answer=='Y' Goto Jail() else Goto Flight();
Easy!
P.S.
It's been more than 10 years since I programmed anything. I'm sure there are syntex errors, give me a break!
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The ten years ain't so bad, but the daily corporal punishment...
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Extensive scarring might deform them, but the fingerprint structure extends below the upper layers of skin that are removed by normal injury. Wikipedia says that John Dillinger tried to destroy his with acid, and failed completely.
So now we really know .... (Score:2)
Take the pledge (Score:2, Funny)
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No more earmarks!
They should be called fingerprints.
Don't ears grow...? (Score:1)
They'll need larger ink pads (Score:1, Funny)
It's going to take a really large ink pad to take ear prints.
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It's going to take a really large ink pad to take ear prints.
How about ultrasonic holograms?
I won't hear of it!
This color clashes with my turban.
100 year history showing that it works? (Score:5, Informative)
"Fingerprinting has a history of 100 years showing that it works."
Fingerprinting has a history of well over 100 years, but what we see is that it works as long as it is not seriously challenged. In its only major rigorous challenge, the 50Kx50k text, substantial problems emerged.
Keep in mind that fingerprints are never admitted into evidence, never used for identification, never even examined. Never. A finger touches a surface and it leaves a partial copy. An investigator finds it and puts powder (matrix) on it, which creates a visible picture of the copy. It is often not possible to get a good photo of the copy, so someone uses tape or other gear to get an image of the picture of the copy. Then someone photographs the tape containing the image of the picture of the copy. Then a print of the photograph of the tape of the image of the picture of the copy is created. If there are no more steps, which would be unusual, that print is what is actually used for evidence or analysis. Scientifically-minded readers will have already tallied up at least a partial list of the errors introduced at each step of the process.
And what sort of analysis is done? The best lab in the country, the FBI, uses an analysis process taught by a high school grad who washed out of college after two years. Obviously, other labs do not enjoy such high standards. What standards do they use, you may ask? None. There are no required national standards for fingerprint analysts. There are guidelines that suggest that a high school diploma should be required, but the advisory guidelines bind no one.
But at least they use a rigorous process with well-defined standards?
"The International Association for Identification assembled in its 58th annual conference... based on a three-year study by its Standardization Committee, hereby states that no valid basis exists at this time for requiring that a predetermined minimum of friction ridge [fingerprint] characteristcs must be present in two impressions in order to establish positive identification."
So no, there are no standards, which is a good thing because the relevant international body has determined that there is "no valid basis" for establishing one.
So now they say that they can get better results by looking at someone's ears? Hm... Well, the good news is that they're probably right. The bad news is that they've got a long way to go before they can say that it's any great accomplishment.
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You sound like a great defense attorney! Can I have your card, to put in my wallet (just in case!).
Re:100 year history showing that it works? (Score:4, Insightful)
The drop out, would that be Bill Gates, Dean Kamen, Michel Dell, Larry Elliston, or Steve Jobs?
Okay, admittedly not all of those guys made it through two full years before washing out of college.
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I've had my fingerprints taken several times in my life. The first time I was in grade school and everyone in class was marched into the "music room" (just another classroom but this one had grade school equivalents of real musical instruments) only to be met by two people in uniform and were were fingerprinted without really telling us why. I found out later that the sheriff was dong this, he was giving the parents the fingerprint cards supposedly as a measure to identify children that were abducted. Ye
One problem (Score:2)
QED (Score:1)
Looking good so far... (Score:1)
Nothing new... (Score:2)
The French police officer, Alphonse Bertillon (April 24, 1853 - February 13, 1914) was a biometrics researcher who created anthropometry, an identification system based on physical measurements. Anthropometry was the first scientific system used by police to identify criminals.
?This was eventually supplanted by fingerprinting, because os inconsistancies in measurement. Using computer- or video-based measurements should help standardize measurements and increase statistical accuracy. Wikipedia article on
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Problem prints (Score:2)
I thought this was old news (Score:2)
Back in the early 90's I had a friend who showed me his Federal ID, they had a front and profile photo and made him hold his hair back to expose his ear for the profile shot. He explained that they used the earlobe as an identifying feature since each person's was unique and was a practice they got from the Nazis. So reading this now, almost 20 years later leaves me scratching my head at what seems to be very very very old news. Of course, I did not read the article, and wouldn't be surprised if it were rep
Ears work for Passive ID (Score:1)
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That is highly illogical.
And what about plastic surgery for the ears? (Score:3, Informative)
I was born with ears that stuck out worse that Prince Charles. I was teased about them all through school.
In college I had my ears "tucked," which basically made them lay flat against my head. I had generous grandparents.
Anyway, the point is that to do this, (the following not for the queasy), they slice open your ear, take out the cartilage (which is what forms all the unique bumps and curves of your ear), manually reshape it, stick it back in, and then sew you up.
Not only did my ears finally not stick out, but they looked totally different than they did before: none of the curves matched, and even my earlobes are a different shape (the bottoms are trimmed a bit and then stitched back to your head.)
This is not terribly expensive surgery, and while a bit painful, if I were a criminal trying to beat a set of "earprints" somehow left at the scene of a crime, I'd have it done in a second.
This idea is earroneous (Score:1)
Plastic surgery (Score:1)
Hear, hear, Upek! (Score:2)
What, so now I'll have to lean over and drag my EAR across that infernal thing on my laptop?
Ear Shape DOES Change (Score:1)
My youngest daughter had pointed ears when she was born (as in Elf/Spock pointy). That went away over a few months. There's still the slightest suggestion of it (she is seven, now), but it definitely did change from what she was born with.
99.6% Accuracy? (Score:2)
There is going to be a windfall (Score:2)
There is going to be a windfall for makers of Spock Ears.
TFS - Callouses (Score:2)
These people have never seen a boxer? (Score:2)
An MMA figher? A wrestler? A rugby forward?
forgery...? (Score:1)
Dad's ears and mine were pretty much identical (Score:2)
When my father was alive we commented on how similar our ears were, right down to the same congenital ripples on the upper edges of our respective right ears. When he died, I inherited his custom-fitted hearing aids, and although I have no need for them, (yet), I put them into my ears just for a lark. They fit me PERFECTLY - no gap, no looseness, no discomfort, and no visible gaps or aberrations in shape.
So maybe ears aren't as close to being unique as has been suggested.
Oops! (Score:1)
Yeah but how often do you grab your earlobe in a fit of anxiety and pull it down, thereby stretching it beyond its length and changing it over a few years to be longer then it should, also, what about those piercings that make huge holes, that does not seem to keep its original form!!!
Biometrics are the Past! (Score:2)
You are confusing terms (Score:1)
The problem is that nobody has but a single identity. You're a different person when you grow up, with your parents, with siblings if any, with friends, with school mates, with house mates, with colleagues, and it varies with every gig and every place and over time. So what is it we call "identity". It's a legal fiction. A useful fiction if you're into administration, but it no more exists than does a corporation. That too is a figment of the laws.
The term "identity" as it is used with respect to means-of-identification means your body inclusive of all changes from birth to death, not your personality.
Along with your body comes a lot of other things, including presumed responsibility for the acts of the person (mind, spirit, personality, whatever) that is controlling that body. If I commit murder at age 20 and claim at age 25 that I'm a different person now, the burden of proof is on me. On the other hand if a murder is committed 5 years ago and an