The future of biometrics: Safer security or new AI risks?

Reporter: Valentina LaFranca
Published: Updated:

In 2021, the Transportation Service Agency (TSA) launched its new touchless identity solution in the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County airport.

Now, it’s available in nine airports across the United States.

Instead of waiting in long lines for a person to manually verify that you match your ID, you get your photo taken, and facial recognition software sends you on your way.

That’s just one example of using biometric data for security.

Is it safe? And where else will be seeing it used?

Biometric data involves using your face, fingerprint, handprint, or voice to log in or pass security.

How does it work?

“If you’re using touch ID or face ID on your phone, this is creating a biometric imprint of yourself on your phone that stays on your phone,” said Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida.

Moran explained that when logging into an app or website on your phone, your phone verifies whether or not it’s you and then sends a yes or no, not the biometric data itself.

“And this can be a lot more secure than a password because you’re not going to forget it,” he added.

And since you can’t send a functional fingerprint over the Internet, it’s much less likely to get hacked.

But what about AI?

“AI is kind of changing the landscape about the types of data that you might want to consider sharing,” Moran said.

While your fingerprint is safe for now, your voice is currently the most vulnerable to an AI attack with voice cloning, and your face may not be that far away.

“We are seeing research that’s coming out that can reverse engineer the kind of depth map that facial recognition systems can be using purely from photos of your face at different angles,” said Moran.

Moran said that it would currently take a very sophisticated knowledge of AI to spoof a face.

Also, since biometric data is stored locally, they would also need your personal device.

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