Siddarth Kamath Week 1: Biometric Identities



    Imagine this. You are one of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) in the Mission Impossible movies. You stand beside your famous and talented friend, Ethan Hunt as he and his friends Simon Pegg and Vegh Rhames, search for a way to fix their intricate machine. One with the powers to create a shape of any person’s face just by selecting their picture and inputting a few lines of code. The face mask comes off clean and Ethan wears it, fitting him perfectly. What he is planning to do next, is frame his enemies and use his new identity for scavenging for clues or finding some information useful to him. This is how everyday runs at the IMF, but in today’s reality, it may not completely work that way.


    The fictional story describing the creation of a new identity, a face mask, to help Ethan Hunt in his hunt for information is an example of the powers of misusing one’s biometric identity. According to thalesgroup.com, biometric identity is a way in which a person can be recognized through unique data and can be used for identification purposes such as for important transactions. It can be thought of as a social security number, but instead of carrying a card to identify oneself, your body itself is the "card" in this analogy. Governments sometimes use this to keep secret, vital data from being stolen and have multiple steps to validate the identity of an individual before being passed into the system. One such example is the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDES) system where United States Government officials have used this technology to identify themselves in their war against the Taliban. Therefore, with powerful technology, such as the machine the IMF was using, a person could theoretically steal another person’s biometric identity.


    In the case of the Taliban, according to brookings.edu, this group has used U.S. built technology to identify those working with the United States Government Agency causing great harm to those caught by these techniques causing many to be worried about its safety. There are also uses of facial recognition hacking where fortified defenses have been destroyed allowing criminals to steal the identity of another individual. As with the usage of online resources, the hacking of unsecure wifi networks can cause the secure information to be leaked and makes biometric identification risky to use. But over time, safer procedures will be put in place to make biometric identifiers safe and possibly used abundantly based on further evaluation. Maybe one day, Ethan Hunt’s world with online resources (such as access to the Internet), could become the future we will wake up to find normal.



Sources:

“Biometrics: Definition, Use Cases, Latest News.” Thales Group, www.thalesgroup.com/en/markets/digital-      
identity-and-security/government/inspired/biometrics. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.

MacCarthy, Mark, et al. “The Enduring Risks Posed by Biometric Identification Systems.” Brookings, 9 Feb. 2022, www.brookings.edu/articles/the-enduring-risks-posed-by-biometric-identification-systems/. 

Comments

  1. Mahesh KarthikeyanSeptember 5, 2023 at 6:52 PM

    Hello Siddarth! Your blog is incredibly captivating, especially with how you incorporate an informative narrative within. I am interested in reading further about the connections between the Mission Impossible franchise and examples of biometric identification in our daily lives. The blog is presented with lots of clarity, describing the Mission Impossible franchise in a short background for those who have not watched the movies. Government agencies employ biometric technology because of the secrecy it provides and the difficulty of surpassing biometric security measures. I wonder about the cost and effectiveness of a possible breakthrough against this technology, as described in the Mission Impossible movies. The blog concisely presents information on biometric technology. I appreciate the relevance of the blog's subject matter in our current times when information is valued on par with gold.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Muhammed AliSeptember 6, 2023 at 4:44 PM

    Hi Siddarth! That was a really interesting piece, and having watched a few of the MI movies, that initial paragraph hooked me very effectively. It was neat to see how you demonstrated the potential parallels between the real world and the Tom Cruise movies, and you proved your points very effectively. The only criticism I have is that some of your sentences run a bit long, so if you condense them a bit, your ideas will flow a lot better. Overall, really well thought out and well written blog!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Patrick ChouSeptember 6, 2023 at 6:28 PM

    HI Siddart, your blog got me hooked from the beginning with the MI plot and tying the parallels between reality and the movie. It was great to see you informing me about the use of this technology, but also how this technology has been exploited. You were able to deliver all of the information concisely while retaining the needed details.

    ReplyDelete

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