International Law

Heathrow Terminal 5 fingerprinting temporarily delayed - bio-safety and computer security worries still remain

It seems that British Airports Authority BAA has temporarily backed regarding Heathrow Terminal 5 mandatory fingerprinting of both domestic and international passengers,

See

• The Daily Telegraph: Heathrow Terminal 5 fingerprint plans 'illegal'
  
• The Guardian: Terminal 5 fingerprinting scrapped
  
• The Register: BAA grounds Heathrow T5 fingerprinting system
  

A previous article in The Register ICO queries Heathrow T5's huge fingerprint scam scan points to the fact that the fingerprint scanners are being supplied bythe German firm of Dermalog, who, no doubt produce excellent finger printing equipment regarding the optics, and scanning compression algorithms etc.

However we can see no data or even any claims on their website regarding any bio-safety mechanisms for cleaning or sterilising their equipment in a mass transit application, to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

The press reports that Heathrow Terminal 5 will be using "4 fingerprints" implies that the Dermalog product must be based on their eBorder Kiosk

Unfortunately, this does not give us any confidence that system is in any way properly tamperproof because:

System requirements:

• MS Windows 2000, XP and Vista
• Pentium III processor or faster
• Min. 256 MB RAM
• USB 2.0 and FireWire interface and CD-ROM drive

USB 2.0 may be a possible vulnerability, but Firewire is definitely a huge security risk.

Full post as published by Spy Blog on March 26, 2008 (boomark / email).