[10899] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Good quote on biometric ID
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Gutmann)
Fri Jun 21 00:11:26 2002
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 21:12:12 +1200 (NZST)
From: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com, cypherpunks@lne.com
I was reading a late-70's paper on computer security recently when I saw that
it contains a nice quote about the futility of trying to use biometrics to
prevent Sept.11-type attacks, I thought I'd share it with people:
When a highway patrolman is sent to his duty, he has to be given the
authority to cite traffic violators. This cannot be done explicitly for each
violator because at the time that the patrolman is sent to his duty, the
traffic violator does not exist, and the identity of the future violators is
not known, so that it is impossible to construct individual access rights for
the violators at that time. The point is that the patrolman's authority has
to do with the behaviour of motorists, not their identity.
- Naftaly Minsky, "An Operation-Control Scheme for Authorisation in Computer
Systems", International Journal of Computer and Information Sciences,
Vol.2, No.2, June 1978, p.157.
Peter.
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