Subject: Re: New proposed solution to the QC biometric issue

From: "Anders Rundgren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 21:52:28 +0100

<snip>
>> Proposed text:
>>
>> " In some cases the subject name that is contained in a public key
>> certificate may not be meaningful enough. This may happen because of the
>> existence of synonyms or because of the use of pseudonyms. A distinction
>> could be made if more attributes were present. However, adding more
>> attributes to a public key certificate placed in a public repository
>> would be going against privacy protection. 

I do not agree on your conclusion.  Whatever attributes you put in a certificate
they should not be in a PUBLIC repository.   A so trivial item like "dateOfBirth" is
a thing that many people object to having published. 

<snip>

>>There are two kinds of biometric
>> attributes that can be used : a picture or a manual signature from the
>> certificate owner.

Fingerprints are coming strong.

http://www.veridicom.com/

Note: There are at least 25 other companies doing similar stuff although I
was impressed by Veridicom's system as the manage to make their
templates a mere 300 bytes.  Formulas rather than pattern it seems.

Fingerprints have one big advantage over the other two items:

They CAN actually be used to automatically verify a persons authenticity at
an entrance in a reasonable controlled area.  That you can cut of a person's
finger is true but there is always some end to what is possible in terms
of security.  The fingerprint solution is very LOW-COST and complements
a smart-card PIN-code very well.

<snip>

Regards
Anders
http://www.mobilephones-tng.com

---

From: Paul Koning <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 16:52:01 -0400

>>>>> "Anders" == Anders Rundgren <[email-masked]> writes:

 Anders> <snip>

 >>> There are two kinds of biometric attributes that can be used : a
 >>> picture or a manual signature from the certificate owner.

 Anders> Fingerprints are coming strong.

I'm puzzled.  A week or two ago it sounded like this whole topic had
been talked to death and was being set aside entirely.  Now it seems
all to be coming back again.  Do we have to debate the entire thing
all over?

	paul

---

From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 18:39:21 -0400

Folks,

We discussed the biometric issue at length and the current proposal to
include a hash of a biometric template, for some well-defined set of human
verifiable biometrics, is the compromise we have reached.

We are not putting a biometrioc template in the cert because it might be
very big and we generally discourage inclusion of very large data items in
certs.

We are not putting a URI in because, under different assumptions, the
matching templame might be stored somewhere for reference, or might be
passed as part of an application protocol.  If the template is not passed
with the cert, then the application protocol may chose to include a URI.
The only thing that does need to be in the cert, for secruity, is the hash
of the template, and the management data to know what hash algorithm was
employed, and what sort of template the hash refers to, e.g., facial image
or handwriting.

Steve