The UK biometric ID card system has hit a snag due to problems obtaining quality fingerprints from citizens over 75 years old, according to a Daily Mail article. While it is possible to overcome this obstacle with additional technology, experts have warned the government that incorporating such technology would significantly raise the already more than $37 billion needs of the tax payer funded system.
Some of the warnings speak of alternative ways to alleviate the potential problem with senior citizens’ poor-quality fingerprints influencing not only cost, but business processes and implementation schedules too, according to Biometrics Assurance Group (BAG) member Professor John Beddington. Also, the BAG warned that there has not yet been sufficient testing with other potential problem-causing demographics such as mute and non-English speaking citizens or the blind and visually impaired.
The government has responded to the negative reports by saying that they expect unusable fingerprint quality to be a rare occurrence no matter the age of the person submitting fingerprints. Their solution in those cases, however, will be to pass on the poor quality image to a fingerprint image expert to manually code the image.
Read the full story here. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/archive-4.gif)
