Identification Technologies

When one considers the subject of identification technology it quickly becomes apparent that this is indeed a big subject to be grappling with. Are we concerned with the identity of products and protectionism against license and patent infringement? Are we concerned with public records and the identity of official documents? Are we concerned with tracking electronic documents and transactions for non-repudiation purposes? Or perhaps we are simply concerned with personal identity and the raft of related situations in everyday life where the verification of personal identity is important. In all of these areas and more, technology has a part to play in providing enhanced options for providing solutions to ID related problems. But equally, it is important to understand the root cause of any problems being experienced and why we need technological solutions to help combat them.

One of the primary drivers behind the increasing focus on ID technology is the increase in crime. Of course, the word 'crime' covers a broad spectrum of activity in itself, some of it enabled by the very technology used in the fight against it. The picture is further confused by the distinction between perception and reality when discussing criminal activity. Over the last few years for example, much has been made of 'Internet' crime. Certainly, there have been some interesting examples of people exploiting weaknesses in the Internet infrastructure for criminal purposes, although, in real terms the levels of internal electronic crime, in both commercial organizations and government are probably far more worrying. Equally worrying, especially in the developed countries, is the rise in violent crime and the tensions created in multi-cultural environments where personal responsibilities seem to be diminished and identity verification can sometimes be difficult.

In areas of product identification there are similar anomalies. We hear much about fraud in terms of the unauthorized copying by individual users of entertainment media and software. In reality, the large music and computer software companies often struggle to provide convincing evidence of serious misuse at this level, although it might be said that retail consumers provide an easy target for counter measures. Perhaps more serious is the extremely competent and well organized market for counterfeit goods (including entertainment media and software) across a huge spectrum of applications and geographic locations, although the masterminds behind such operations present a much more difficult target to address.

In any event, criminal activity, whether in the form of fraud or more serious civil offences must be considered one of the key drivers behind developments in ID technologies and markets. Without crime, we would have relatively little need for some of the specific ID related techniques employed today. There are of course other drivers. The ability to easily locate and recognize physical entities such as goods or documents for non-crime related purposes is in itself a valid reason to develop associated technologies. There may be applications here in mass production using robotics, in library systems, in the identification of dangerous drugs or chemicals, in computerized archives and many other areas. Similarly, the ability to tag physical items in order to subsequently identify their time and place of manufacture is very important in certain spheres of activity where usage and aging may be directly related to safety, especially when exposed to public use such as aviation and travel for example. In agriculture and farming circles it has become commonplace to tag livestock for a variety of reasons from controlling feed to monitoring individual age. Conservationists may use similar techniques for tracking the movement of species or tagging natural elements. Foodstuff and household product manufacturers will also be keen on tracking batches for movement and aging reasons.

Indeed, when we start to think about it, our requirements for identifying both goods and individuals are incredibly far reaching. They also go back a long way. The ancient Egyptians effectively used biometric techniques in order to identify individuals. Noteworthy goods and artifacts of all persuasions have been hall-marked in one way or another, ever since mankind was first capable of producing them. The concept of identifying manufactured entities and possessions, animals and human beings and even territory is not new. What has changed in recent times is the available technology with which to do so.

Technology is sometimes reactive, as when a solution is sought to an enduring problem. It is sometimes proactive when a technology is developed for specific applicability to certain areas. It is sometimes speculative, when a technology is developed because it is easily possible to do so, and applications are subsequently sought. Sometimes developments in technology are simply the product of a happy accident whereupon interesting discoveries are made which have obvious applications in other areas. Whatever the situation, the emergence of technological developments are a key driver for parallel developments in identity techniques. In this context there are several interesting areas of technology which might be considered particularly pertinent.

In terms of the tagging of physical goods with identifying features, we have technologies such as barcodes, holograms, special printing techniques and inks, RFID tags and other mechanisms. If you have a look around your local supermarket, computer store, book store, record and video store, or indeed, general department store, you will be hard pressed to find an item offered for sale which doesn't have some sort of special identifier or tag. Witness the developments at supermarket checkouts for example. It was not that long ago that check out personnel needed to physically check the price ticket on each item and manually enter the amount onto a cash register in order to calculate your final bill. Nowadays they simply pass each item in front of a scanner surface which will read a bar code affixed to the item in question and automatically register the product description and cost as a transaction in the 'cash register' which of course may be more accurately described as a computer which happens to also control access to the cash drawer. The number of items which cannot be recognized in this manner are very small and, in some cases, none at all. The faster and more reliable this scanning process can become, the better for the supermarkets. The cheaper the tags, and greater amount of information held, the better for the supermarkets. Therefore additional developments in this area will naturally be welcomed. One such development already in place, allows individual shoppers to scan their own items as they select them from the aisles. They then simply hand in the handheld scanner at a special fast lane checkout and pay for their entire basket of shopping without the cashier having to inspect the individual items. A walk around some of the supermarkets already implementing this scheme, shows that it is very popular with shoppers who seem to have no trouble at all in using the technology in question. Of course, the technology has already been well tried in supermarkets, by their own in-house staff who use similar devices for stock control purposes. Will the emphasis eventually change from optical recognition and scanning to RFID tags and electronic field scanning? Some are already experimenting with this idea which will no doubt will become increasingly attractive if costs and reliability are enhanced. At present, you will see many examples of single item identification using this technique, although multiple items read concurrently in a given field without error might represent more of a challenge in some environments. Nevertheless, technology researchers have been looking into this idea for some time now. It will be most interesting, to see future implementations of this particular technique.

Tagging of individual items in this manner is of course not restricted to the retail environment. There are many scenarios in industry where it is useful to tag individual items or batches of items. Such an approach is often used in manufacturing environments, for examples in the manufacture of automobiles where individual parts scanning is particularly useful for a number of reasons including compatibility and aging. Indeed, finished automobiles are also tag in this fashion in order that a single tag may effectively identify the automobile in question as well as precise details of its manufacture. Another very good example of article scanning is provided by the parcel courier services. Anything which you receive via this channel will have a bar code or other tagging mechanism upon it, ensuring that the parcel may be tracked throughout its journey right to your front door regardless of where the journey originated. The similar approach may be taken to baggage handling for overseas travellers.

All of the examples given above are effectively drivers for ongoing development of this technology. We shall no doubt see improvements in related technologies, from the size, cost, and resilience of the tag to improvements in automatic scanning techniques. We may also see further examples of tags embedded into products or packaging in a covert manner as a deterrent to illegal copying and substandard manufacture of branded goods. In such cases, the tags may be undetectable to the casual observer or even the trained eye. We may also see developments in the tag itself, whether it uses visible barcodes, infrared, two-dimensional or three-dimensional codes, radio frequency, or other techniques.

In parallel with developments in article tagging, similar advances are constantly being made in the identification of individuals. One such area is in physical access control, time and attendance monitoring and other applications where users have traditionally used some sort of token. These tokens have ranged from simple magnetic stripe cards, through special technology cards such as wiegand, infrared, and other techniques to what are commonly referred to as smart cards, but more properly described as chip cards. Perhaps the greatest potential for development in this respect lies within the chip card area. We have already seen prices of chip card's reduced quite substantially within the last few years as well as greater capacity on the chip itself and a wider variety of potential applications. Indeed, the diversity of applications for chip cards has to date been quite interesting with examples such as low-cost cards for travel, cards for use in set-top TV boxes, conventional access control cards, whether they be for physical access control or logical access control into computer networks, special cards for national health-care schemes, national identity cards and a variety of other applications. One notable driver in the chip card area, has been the multi-application card. The idea being that a single card can be used in various applications regardless of who originally issued the card. Whilst the technology is perfectly capable of realizing such an ambition, there are usually more difficult issues to overcome regarding who owns what on the card (including branding) and how the status of the user within different applications may be synchronized. However, we shall undoubtedly see some very interesting developments in this area within the next few years.

Personal identity verification requirements take a number of forms. The applications described above may be fairly straightforward in that they are mostly concerned with benefits being bestowed upon the holder of the card, such as might be the case with customer loyalty schemes, bank cards and similar applications. There are other requirements where the emphasis is slightly different, such as the need to correctly identify individuals for immigration purposes or other public situations. Tokens are also used in such situations, however they may be usefully complemented by biometric technology.

Biometrics have been variously described as an emerging technology for the last decade. Many technology observers have been surprised that the uptake of biometrics has not been faster and wider in scope. There are perhaps a number of reasons for this including costs, ease of integration, public awareness, issues around data protection and privacy, and a host of other issues. However, biometrics have never-the-less been successfully used across a number of applications across the world. Some of these applications have been in areas such as prisons, the military, governmental and other areas where their use has not necessarily been publicized. Other applications, predominantly for access control, have been within the corporate sphere, but have often been of a relatively small scale. There have been various trials in more visible application areas such as banking for example and, indeed, some of these have developed into continuing applications, albeit usually also on a fairly small scale. These applications will continue to drive the development of biometric technology as will the potential for integrating biometrics with other techniques such as certificates and chip cards.

There is another potential application which may serve to drive the development of biometric technology and that is automated border control. Various entities have been considering the potential for automated border control for more than ten years. Originally, this was conceived as a mechanism to ease the transition of passengers through congested airports. The rationale behind this was that there are a finite number of airports, and that whilst it is acknowledged that the planning and development of new airports takes time, the rise in world-wide passenger traffic was, in the early nineties, rushing ahead substantially. If this wasn't to lead to increased congestion at the major airports, a way needed to be found to process arriving passengers more quickly. Biometrics seemed to offer a potential solution to this problem and various trials took place throughout the world accordingly. More recently, and especially following the tragic events of September 2001, the emphasis has shifted slightly away from passenger facilitation and more towards security. There is consequently a renewed interest in the idea of using biometrics in association with border control. There are in fact such systems already in operation (the Ben Gurion airport in Israel for example) as well as a number of trials which have received much publicity, such as the Privium system implemented at Amsterdam airport Schiphol.

While there is considerable interest in these ideas there are also many issues to overcome, some of them completely unrelated to the technology being proposed. There is also a certain amount of misunderstanding around the applicability of biometric technology for wide-scale public applications. Consequently, there is still a good deal of work to be undertaken before the wider adoption of automated border control becomes feasible. The necessary research involved in this work well undoubtedly serve to drive forward development of biometric technology as might be applicable to wider scale applications. Synergistic with the border control application, is the idea of a national identity card (probably a chip card) which would incorporate a biometric. Many countries have been thinking about this, some of them have already undertaken trials, some of them have stated their intentions, and undoubtedly we will hear more of this idea.

In conclusion, the drivers for the continuing development of ID based technologies are many and varied. The technologies and applications thereof, seem to fall naturally into distinct groups. The tagging of items and goods for subsequent identification is in itself abroad area of application with many subdivisions. We shall undoubtedly see refinements of existing techniques in this area, together perhaps with the development of new techniques. Radio frequency tagging technology is particularly interesting in this respect and holds much potential for the future. Digital watermarks should also prove interesting over the next 24 months or so, as there are many technology organizations developing ideas in this context. This technique may become particularly valuable in areas of document control and copyright.

Another obvious grouping is the use of portable tokens by individuals for access control purposes. Included under this heading are tokens for physical and logical access control, time and attendance monitoring, and a variety of tokens used for banking and related purposes. We may also append to this group tokens used predominantly for loyalty scheme purposes such as those issued by supermarkets, fuel stations, airlines and similar. In these areas of application, the cost of the token itself has often been the primary factor in the use of such technology. Whether or not we shall see a shift in this emphasis as a result of enhanced functionality offered by more recent token developments remains to be seen. This is a topic that the banks have been struggling with for some time in their deliberations around the use of chip cards. Similarly, the potential for multiple application tokens has yet to be realized in many sectors, although token manufacturers have been promoting this possibility for some years now.

Another obvious grouping is that of online transaction security, where much discussion has taken place around the use of digital certificates. The acceptance of the use of public and private keys within a PKI environment has been notably low, in spite of the fact that the technology has been available for some time now. Perhaps one reason for this has been perceived complication of implementation together with unrealistic costs quoted by certain technology providers. Whether we see a change of emphasis in this respect remains to be seen. The use of a biometric in association with digital certificates is an interesting idea though, and could conceivably provide many benefits. However, the infrastructure and cost issues will need to be addressed if such an idea is to be embraced.

The personal identity grouping, as might be considered for national identity schemes, the provision of health and social benefits, automated border control and similar applications, is perhaps the most complex of all. This is because we are not simply dealing with questions of technology, but are also uncovering a whole host of societal issues which have implications for data protection and privacy. Some of these issues are necessarily complex and will take time to resolve. However, the relevant technologies will play an important part in this unfolding picture and their respective development is therefore very important.

While in simple terms the key drivers behind identification technology may be summarized as security, the identification of items, the verification of personal identity and the authentication of documents and transactions, the overall picture is a little more complex. There are many subdivisions of each of these main themes, any one of which may drive some very interesting developments in related technologies within the next few years. One thing is for certain, the broad area of identity verification will not diminish in its importance to industry, government and society in general.