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+title: Press Release BioP II Study
+date: 2005-09-06 00:00:00 
+updated: 2009-04-18 19:12:41 
+author: frankro
+tags: update
+
+CCC warns of disaster with biometry in new passports
+
+<!-- TEASER_END -->
+
+The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has recently
+published the "BioP2 study" on the capabilities of biometric methods for
+the new traveling passports ("ePass"). The Chaos Computer Club (CCC)
+warns against the usage of the obviously unsuitable biometric systems
+after analyzing the study. Facing the inadequate technology and the
+enormous costs, a hi-tech fiasco is looming for the federal government.
+
+Every year nearly 2 million Germans will be affected by the introduction
+of the ePass beginning on November 1, 2005. The BSI-study's aim was to
+investigate the usability and feasibility of biometric procedures under
+real world conditions. It was commissioned to provide a factual base for
+the law-making process and to give recommendations for a possible
+implementation on airports and borders. The study results were
+completely ignored in the lawmaking process.
+
+### Biometric systems unsuitable
+
+The tested systems were found to falsely reject between 3 and 23 percent
+of the participating persons. Every day tens of thousands of people will
+be stranded in front of red-blinking monitors if those systems are to be
+used in border controls all over Germany. People's fingerprints or
+digital photos aren't recognized by the software. According to the
+Federal Ministry of the Interior these citizens will face 'aggravated
+inspections'.
+
+Research regarding the security against circumvention of the biometric
+systems has also been conducted during the BSI-study. The results of
+these tests are kept secret. "We assume the BSI came to the same
+devastating results as we did in our research", said Andy Müller-Maguhn,
+speaker of the CCC. The hacker's society has in the recent past often
+demonstrated the circumvention of various biometric systems by simple
+means.
+
+The study comes to the conclusion that many technological improvements
+and again a "in-depth research about the grade of operability, the
+detection rate and the security against circumvention" is needed. The
+BSI thus admits that the technology is everything but usable in practice
+right now. They BSI even expresses the feeble hope that citizens will
+adapt to the rejections, high error-rates and non-intuitive user
+interface of the systems, as they want to pass the border anyway.
+
+According to the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) the German
+passport printing technology is the most secure in the world.
+Radio-chips and biometric systems will lower that level of security
+because border police officers will get used to trust the inadequate
+technology. Andy Müller-Maguhn sums up: "An expensive and insecure
+system will be introduced here which has the best chances to become
+another large scale technology disaster. It is obvious that the
+introduction of the ePass is mainly targeted at serving industry
+interests and to salvage the recently privatized German Bundesdruckerei
+from the threat of bankruptcy."
+
+The Chaos Computer Club demands to immediately discontinue the
+introduction of biometric systems and radio-chips into passports until
+further research has been conducted. Should a non-biased audit of the
+procedures and systems confirm that they are not usable, their use in
+passports must be abandoned completely.
+
+### Criticism in overview:
+
+-   Recognition performance:\
+    None of the tested systems has a satisfying performance. In
+    particular, the iris and facial recognition was generating false
+    rejection rates which made clear that they are unusable.
+-   Security:\
+    The operational reliability of the security mechanisms and their
+    security against circumvention could not be documented since those
+    test results were not published. Independent research by the CCC
+    showed that all biometric systems had an inadequate security against
+    circumvention.
+-   Usability:\
+    The systems do not provide an adequate user interface. Intensive
+    supervision of the user and extensive training for the border guards
+    are required. The passport holders will bear the costs for this.
+-   User acceptance:\
+    Because of the high false rejection rates and the non-intuitive user
+    interface more than half of the testsubjects did show their
+    dissatisfaction by not participating the field-test anymore after
+    registration.
+-   Biased results of the study:\
+    By removing significantly bad results in the beginning of the field
+    test the recognition rate of the systems was presented biased. A
+    change of the testparameters during the test period skewed the
+    results additionally and further reduced the already small test data
+    base. The appendix with the concrete basic data from the tests was
+    not published.
+-   Representativeness:\
+    The number and choice of participants in the study is not
+    representative for the German population regarding age, gender, job
+    and other attributes. The results of the study thus provide no
+    reliable information for the real feasibility of the procedures.
+    Because of the inadequate composition of the study participants,
+    much worse results in a real life environment are to be expected.
+-   Costs:\
+    The cost for the procurement of the biometric enrollment systems in
+    the approximately 6000 registration offices, the thousands of
+    inspection machines for the 419 borders checkpoints, the additional
+    personal on those machines, the training of the personal and the
+    necessary building modifications (for optimal illumination for
+    facial recognition) were not looked at. A cost benefit analysis was
+    not done.
+
+Some background material about problems associated with biometrics is
+provided online by the CCC at [www.ccc.de/epass](/epass/). We recommend
+the answers of ministry of interior to our questions
+([](/epass/stellungnahme-bmi)) with our comments to the media in
+particular.\
+Questions to biometrie(at)ccc.de or Frank Rosengart, +49-177-3786912.