https://nitter.net/axios/status/1712679556375601187

  • Wertheimer [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I was talking to a schoolteacher the other day who was getting re-fingerprinted for the Nth time. Their last fingerprinting was two years ago. Same job, same county, etc. Everyone was justifying it because of "privacy." But, like, it's all going to the same database, where the same people have access. Are they destroying the records every two years (doubt ), or did the authorities just forget their own passwords?

    • 7bicycles [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      If you get into the reaaaaaaaaaaaal nitty gritty of security regarding biometric factors shit turns real weird eventually. Like "How do we know that fingerprint is still attached to a living person?" type stuff.

      I'd be sure as hell this isn't what happened here, just sort of a fun fact. Also why I think thinking biometric factors as safe is fucking insane, exactly because they're fairly immuteable. You get one data leak on your fingerprint-security-database and now you can never use that shit again if you're taking it seriously. And if you don't expect nation-state-level actors as a threat vector, why the fuck are you taking fingerprints?

      It's mostly just technologically illiterate people falling for it imo

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Mmm.

        I should go print a silicon printer that can make fake fingers based on, idk, someone's fabvorite ice cream flavor or something. Really hasten the slide in to the security abyss.

        Either way, I still use passwords for everything, and every password is unique. Biometrics my right tit they don't even have t beat that out of you, then can just cut something off. At least with the password manager it has to either have a vulnerability or they need access to state-level legal muscle to force the people who designed it to open the lock. Plus if one password gets compromized nothing else is unless it's the master, and even with the master they still need access to the password locker to do anything with it.

        • 7bicycles [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I should go print a silicon printer that can make fake fingers based on, idk, someone's fabvorite ice cream flavor or something. Really hasten the slide in to the security abyss.

          Pretty much everytime you look into this type of stuff "good print of fingerprint" does the job just fine, you don't even have to get that fancy with it.

          Biometric security is better understood as a convenience product.

      • NewAcctWhoDis [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        A fingerprint is a convenient way to unlock my laptop and can't be leaked by a security camera.

        • 7bicycles [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          It's also a great way to get your fingerprints nicked by whoever kind of just wants 'em

    • 4zi [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’ve asked the county clerk this once when I had to get my fingerprints done just because I was working in a different building 3 blocks away, but basically every time you renew certain trainings or certificates it’s required regardless of how many times you’ve done it before

      • Wertheimer [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I did some googling and this was the best explanation I could find. (Most everything else was just "because that's the requirement.")

        Maybe I'm too paranoid but I still think the feds would figure out how to fuck with me, if they wanted to, based on the prints I had taken for a job I held >10 years ago.

        • 4zi [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          That would require the labyrinthine hostile intermingling of state and federal bureaucracies to work together, so you’re probably fine thumb-cop

          • 7bicycles [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I feel like this is a very Chief Wiggum moment in the sense that it wouldn't help to prove you got your bike stolen but it would help to pinpoint you at the scene of some crime