{"id":1142,"date":"2010-07-03T19:45:08","date_gmt":"2010-07-04T03:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2010-07-08T10:54:14","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T18:54:14","slug":"doing-it-right-touch2id","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=1142","title":{"rendered":"Doing it right:  Touch2Id"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/2010\/06\/wiltshire.pdf\" class=\"broken_link\"><img class=\"alignright\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/2010\/06\/wiltshiresmall.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>And now for something refreshingly different:\u00a0 an innovative company that is doing identity right.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I&#39;m talking about a British outfit called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.touch2id.co.uk\" class=\"broken_link\">Touch2Id<\/a>.\u00a0 Their concept is <em>really<\/em> simple.\u00a0 They offer young people\u00a0a smart card\u00a0that can be used to prove\u00a0they are\u00a0old enough\u00a0to drink alcohol.\u00a0\u00a0The technology is\u00a0now well beyond the &#8220;proof of concept&#8221; phase &#8211;\u00a0in fact its use\u00a0in Wiltshire, England is<a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/2010\/06\/wiltshire.pdf\" class=\"broken_link\"> being expanded <\/a>based on its initial success.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To register,\u00a0people\u00a0present their ID documents and, once verified, a\u00a0template of their fingerprint is stored on a Touch2Id card that is immediately\u00a0given to them.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>When they go to a bar, they\u00a0wave their card over a machine similar to a credit card reader, and press their finger on the machine.\u00a0\u00a0If their finger matches the template on their card, the lights come on and they can walk on in.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0 What&#39;s great here is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Merchants don&#39;t have to worry about making mistakes.\u00a0 The age vetting process is stringent and fake IDs are weeded out by experts.<\/li>\n<li>Young people don&#39;t have to worry about being\u00a0discriminated against\u00a0(or being embarassed) just because they &#8220;look young&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>No identifying information is released to the merchant.\u00a0 No name, age or photo appears on (or is stored on) the card.<\/li>\n<li>The movements of the young person are not tracked.<\/li>\n<li>There is no central database assembled that contains the fingerprints of innocent people<\/li>\n<li>The fingerprint template remains the property of the person with the fingerprint &#8211; there is no privacy issue or security honeypot.<\/li>\n<li>Kids cannot lend their card to a friend &#8211; the friend&#39;s finger would not match the fingerprint template.<\/li>\n<li>If the card is lost or stolen, it won&#39;t work any more<\/li>\n<li>The templates on the card are digitally signed and can&#39;t be tampered with<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I met the man behind the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.touch2id.co.uk\" class=\"broken_link\">Touch2Id<\/a>, Giles Sergant, at the recent <a href=\"www.eema.org\" class=\"broken_link\">EEMA meeting<\/a> in London.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"float: left; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/2010\/06\/touch2idkim.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"390\" height=\"292\" \/>Being a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/pippaking.blogspot.com\/2007\/04\/over-on-kim-camerons-identity-weblog-he.html\">skeptic <\/a>versed in the (mis) use of biometrics in identity &#8211; especially\u00a0the fingerprinting\u00a0of our kids &#8211; I\u00a0was initially\u00a0more than\u00a0skeptical.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But Giles has done his homework (even auditing the course given by\u00a0privacy experts Gus Hosein and Simon Davies at the London School of Economics).\u00a0 The better I understood the approach he\u00a0has taken, the more\u00a0impressed I was.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually I even agreed to enroll so as\u00a0to get a feeling for what the experience was like.\u00a0 The verdict:\u00a0 amazing.\u00a0 Its a lovely piece of minimalistic engineering, with no unnecessary moving parts or ugly underbelly.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If I look strangely euphoric in the photo\u00a0that was taken\u00a0it is because I was thoroughly surprised by seeing something so good.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, Giles has already added an alternate\u00a0form factor &#8211; an NFC\u00a0sticker people can put on their mobile phone so they don&#39;t actually need to carry around an additional artifact.\u00a0 It will be fascinating to watch how young people respond to this initiative, which Giles is trying to grow from the bottom up.\u00a0 More info on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/touch2id\/197319223959?ref=ts\">Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Privacy friendly &#8220;Proof-Of-Age&#8221; program is being expanded due to its initial success<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[48,17,3,40,11,44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}