Over ten years ago, I used to work for a company that provided system [and device] to track when employees arrived and left the building.<p>Most of these employees work in the fields handling heavy equipment. Most of them had no fingerprint since they'd been worn out. We ended up using palm recognition.<p>The idea that "all people have a unique fingerprint" is a widely believed falsehood.
It's disappointing how rigid society can be: it's my way or the highway.<p>When someone doesn't have a particular, not inherently required characteristic to access something, there should be a series of fallbacks, but all too often this just excludes people.<p>This can be seen in all areas of life, in different severities:<p>- the entire topic of accessibility is about letting people make use of the abilities they have despite the ones they don't have. Not having functional legs doesn't have to prevent people from filing a document in the office.<p>- technology which once was optional but never essential becomes required with time. Booking a doctor's visit over the phone only, buying goods over the internet only, filing taxes only with a computer, accessing a bank account only with an Android program. All that with no fallback to the post office or a personal visit.<p>- the requirement to pass payments through an intermediary is getting more common. Gone are the days of paying bills or getting salary directly at the office, and the sphere of buying at the point of sale is losing the cash fallback, if stories from Asia are to be believed.<p>None of the technological changes are bad as options, but when they become the only choices, they work to disenfranchise people, especially ones related to banking and travel freedom. Debit/credit cards are not accessible to a huge chunk of the world's population, and even in Europe, getting a bank account as an immigrant can be hard.<p>Another thing that strikes me in the article is calling the condition "disease", without providing any evidence that it has any negative health impact. On the other hand, it matches the definition of disability as something the society imposes [0]. That would make this a paradoxical case of someone not impaired but disabled.<p>[0] <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/what-does-it-mean-to-consider-yourself-a-disabled-person" rel="nofollow">https://aeon.co/essays/what-does-it-mean-to-consider-yoursel...</a>
I once watched someone crash every fingerprint reader in an extremely high traffic border crossing. The police kept asking him to try the next one, much to the dismay of everyone queueing. The machines would BSOD and they'd shut that kiosk. At the time, I joked that his fingerprints were malware or specifically designed to cause a buffer overflow somehow.
Sounds to me these men are victims of abusive software bugs. They have a finger print... it may not be unique or normal. But pressing their inked finger onto paper will leave a print. I assume the software is looking for common pieces of a fingerprint to work. Said software isn’t considering the edge case of a smooth or mostly smooth finger pad.<p>The fact that the government workers are letting buggy software determine eligibility for drivers licenses and passports is the real issue here. It’s really sad.<p>Just reading this makes me so frustrated. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to be them. I hope this article helps these men get the exposure they need to end this.
Yet another proof you need another factor of authentication. From my experience with multiple mass enrolments of fingerprint authentication of software (more than a million people combined) about 20% don't have usable fingerprints.<p>Let me repeat that - never rely a 100% of any piece of biometric or any other type of authentication. Have a fail-safe mode for each.<p>And what about people with missing fingers or hands? Or those who work manual labor and their fingerprints simply get scarred too much to match their records?
Quite a significant proportion of people have fingerprints which cannot be read[1]. Phone fingerprint readers never work. This causes no end of trouble with airport immigration in various places. I spent a couple of hours in a back room at Boston airport while various people attempted to read my fingerprints (I have them, but they never work in those airport machines).<p>[1] About 2-3% if you trust this random comment: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/62c3oj/my_fingerprints_cannot_be_recognized_and_its/dflvwbj/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/62c3oj/m...</a>
How would much of this work for a handless man?<p>Surely people are born without hands — can they not get passports? A driver's licence I would perhaps understand, but certainly they should be able to be issued a passport?
Prior to the pandemic my phone could be reliably unlocked with my fingerprint, and I could access my bank accounts and confirm transactions with them.<p>Since the pandemic started, the extra regular and thorough hand-washing caused my phone to stop recognising my fingerprint most of the time.<p>Now to unlock I usually have to use another method instead, and some financial apps won't let me in or let me confirm transactions at all because they require the previously registered fingerprint, so I have to use the web version of those services.
Had to deal with fingerprinting for a couple work gigs. One thing that really messed up the process was me putting in bathroom tile. Between me using my fingers to smooth the grout and other manhandling/construction - I apparently wore off the prints enough to cause issues with the reader.
Friend has bad eczema and occasionally loses his fingerprints.<p>Not a problem most of the time, but he has real difficulty getting through American airport security.