By Lucy Sherriff for The
Register
This article has been reproduced from The Register, with
permission.
The standards body, BSI, has published a set of four new BS
ISO/IEC 19794 standards, covering the science of biometrics, using
biological characteristics to identify individuals, according to
reports.
The standards will apply to the biometric technology that is to
be added to British passports, and will also cover any future ID
card, the BSI says. They will also cover access control and
identification systems, such as the information that might be
stored on a smartcard.
The aim is to ensure interoperability between the various
products that will inevitably come to market, so that data
collected by a machine from one vendor can be read by a machine
from another, and so on.
The BSI also says the standards are designed to protect against
inaccuracies in ID data.
The BSI began work on the standards in June 2004. It said then
that the need for the standards was only partly politically driven,
but acknowledged that the initial market would be mainly
governmental and public sector.
© The Register
2005
