D3.10: Biometrics in identity management

Title: NEGATIVE IDENTITY VERIFICATION

Negative identity verification

The biometric factor has special qualities for the authentication process. Unlike a secret or a token, biometric characteristics are tightly bound to a physical person. A person cannot deny that he or she carries a certain biometric. This opens the unique possibility to authenticate an uncooperative person or even to prove to an impostor his true identity (negative identification) if the person can be urged to deliver a biometric sample.  

Thus biometric identification has the unique potential to prove that a person that claims to have a certain identity is an impostor or that he or she has already enrolled under another identity, for example, in a biometric Type I government controlled ID model. This can be used, for example, for preventing terrorists from boarding airplanes. As opposed to other identification or verification systems, e.g. username password systems or the possession of a physical token, only biometrics offer this mode of operation. It is inherent to the identification mode that a large number of false matches will be triggered. This problem is adequately described by Prabhakar et al.

Thus biometrics may become a useful method to deploy a reliable identity verification system in a hostile or non cooperative community. This quality of biometrics is also useful in forensics to discharge innocent persons.