{"id":573,"date":"2006-09-11T08:37:52","date_gmt":"2006-09-11T16:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=573"},"modified":"2006-09-11T08:37:52","modified_gmt":"2006-09-11T16:37:52","slug":"what-you-have-versus-what-you-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=573","title":{"rendered":"What you have versus what you are"},"content":{"rendered":"

 Ralf Bendrath<\/a> sees biometrics as being about “what you have” (had?) rather than “what you are”.<\/p>\n

Kim Cameron at Identityblog picked up<\/a> on Jerry Fishenden's post<\/a> on the problems of biometrics (by the way: Jerry will speak at our privacy workshop in Athens, see below<\/a>). He again brings up the story from Malaysia<\/a>, where some brutal car thieves cut off the index finger of a Mercedes owner in order to circumvent the biometric engine lock. First of all, the thieves could have had it much easier<\/a>, also without having to carry around a rotting finger. With a bit more high-tech, in the future they could maybe just read the fingerprint out of the car owner's passport.<\/p>\n

But more important, this case shows the problems with identity and how hard it is to proof to a machine who you are. It is often based on the classic trinity of authentication, which either can be done by something you have<\/span> (a key, a USB dongle, a chipcard), something you know<\/span> (a password, a PIN, your mother's maiden name), or something you are<\/span> (your fingerprint, your retina). There are of course other possible authentication factors<\/a>, but these are the most common.<\/p>\n

This story makes clear that “what you have” is much clearer than “what you are”. I would prefer saying “I have ten fingers” instead of “I am ten fingers”. “What I am” relates more directly to my personality \/ identity than “what I have” or “what I know”. It is a story<\/a>, a flowing amorphous thing, changing from context to context and over time. Of course, you can break it down to some extent<\/span> to single pieces of data (address, date of birth, employer, email, favourite mp3s, …) – but this is all not good for authentication purposes, as most of it is not really secret. “What I know” can be secret, and as Jerry Fishenden points out in his post, could be linked to “what I have” in order to have multi-factor authentication. But it again is not the same as “what I am”.<\/p>\n

Biometrics therefore is more about what I have<\/span> than what I am<\/span>. The only difference is that it can't be stolen as easily as a car key or a passport. Fingers can be cut off, but faces? Ok, Hollywood<\/a> was always ahead of us.<\/p>\n

Last open question: Can “what you have” also be said about the way you walk<\/a>? Probably not. But is that really what you are?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ralf would prefer saying “I have ten fingers” instead of “I am ten fingers”. He has a point. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,17,2,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573"}],"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=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}