Child Identification - Thinking Of Fingerprinting Your Children?

When speaking to parents about child identification, the first things that come to mind are fingerprints and DNA information. However, there seems to be a complete lack of awareness regarding fingerprints and the crucial need in updating them on a regular basis.

Most parents, with the exception of people who have studied medicine or criminology, believe that their children?s fingerprints remain the same from birth to death.

We all believe our fingerprints to be as permanent as a tiger?s stripes since they are formed before our birth, while in the womb. Though this is absolutely correct, here is the kicker; children?s fingerprints are actually changing for the first five to seven years of their life.

The easiest way to explain this contradiction to you is with the following example; picture an under-inflated balloon with a picture on its surface, as this under-inflated balloon has air added to it, the picture becomes larger and becomes somewhat distorted.

With this in mind, think about the size of a newborn?s fingers. Pretty darn tiny!

On average it takes children approximately eighteen to twenty one months before their very tiny fingerprints have developed enough to be of any use. We have all heard the expression ?As smooth as a baby?s bottom? this also applies to fingers!

That is why footprints are taken for children younger than twenty-one months of age.

Now getting back to our ?balloon?, think of your child?s fingerprints as the picture on the balloon, as they grow older, their fingerprints, though they are actually changing, remain the same. One thing to keep in mind is that as your children grow older, their fingerprints might also change due to their skin?s flexibility and also due to disfiguration caused by a scar(s).

When studying fingerprints, the authorities use certain identifying features or characteristic points: ridge endings, dots and bifurcations, in order to make a positive identification. With every passing year of your child?s life, their fingers are growing in size, and these characteristic points become more pronounced, it becomes easier for the authorities to read your child?s fingerprints.

For this reason, it is your task, as a responsible parent to update your child?s fingerprints at least once a year. The thought of the fingerprints ever becoming useful is in itself a bone chilling one, for they are only used after the unimaginable has happened, passive identification. However, if needed, do you not want to provide the authorities with your child?s the most accurate and easiest to distinguish identification?

Our next tidbit of advice is on the location in which parents keep their children?s fingerprints. We recommend you keep them in a Ziploc baggie in the bottom of the freezer.

Here are some of the reasons for this suggestion:

- Your children do not play in the freezer and other than food nothing is kept in the freezer, therefore, you will always know exactly where they are.

- If you are not at home, you can easily direct a babysitter or neighbor to your freezer.

- Unlike a bank safety deposit box, you always have access to your freezer.

- Unlike a home safe or strong box, if in a state of panic, you don?t have to try and remember a four, five or six digit combination, or try to explain to a babysitter how to open your safe.

Our logic behind this suggestion is; should the unthinkable ever happen, the minute the authorities knock on your door, you want to have your child?s identification/fingerprint kit in their hands. Time is of the essence; you do not want to be tearing the house apart trying to remember where your child?s fingerprints are.

Last tidbit; when leaving town on holidays, don?t forget to pack your children?s identification kit. Once again if something ever happened, your kids identification will not be of much use, two thousand miles away in your freezer.

Our fingerprints are completely unique, one of a kind! Identical twins do not have the same fingerprints, although they do share the same DNA.

Keep in mind, as you are now aware, fingerprints and DNA information will only ever be used after something happens. When looking for a Child ID provider, please remember the old adage ?an ounce of prevention far outweighs a pound of cure?, think ?proactive?.

Scott Irwin is the Marketing Director for Child I.D. Labels inc. For more information on their unique proactive approach to child safety, visit http://www.childidatlantic.com. Child ID Labels is growing and open to international distributorship inquiries. Email us at info@childidatlantic.com.

High-Tech Fingerprint Fraud

Eyeballs, a severed hand, or fingers carried in ziplock bags. Back alley eye replacement surgery. These are scenarios used in recent blockbuster movies like Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report" and "Tomorrow Never Dies" to illustrate how unsavory characters in high-tech worlds beat sophisticated security and identification systems.

Sound fantastic? Maybe not. Biometrics is the science of using biological properties, such as fingerprints, an iris scan, or voice recognition, to identify individuals. And in a world of growing terrorism concerns and increasing security measures, the field of biometrics is rapidly expanding.

"Biometric systems automatically measure the unique physiological or behavioral 'signature' of an individual, from which a decision can be made to either authenticate or determine that individual's identity," explained Stephanie C. Schuckers, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Clarkson University. "Today, biometric systems are popping up everywhere - in places like hospitals, banks, even college residence halls - to authorize or deny access to medical files, financial accounts, or restricted or private areas."

"And as with any identification or security system," Schuckers adds, "biometric devices are prone to 'spoofing' or attacks designed to defeat them."

Spoofing is the process by which individuals overcome a system through an introduction of a fake sample. "Digits from cadavers and fake fingers molded from plastic, or even something as simple as Play-Doh or gelatin, can potentially be misread as authentic," she explains. "My research addresses these deficiencies and investigates ways to design effective safeguards and vulnerability countermeasures. The goal is to make the authentication process as accurate and reliable as possible."

Schuckers' biometric research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. She is currently assessing spoofing vulnerability in fingerprint scanners and designing methods to correct for these as part of a $3.1 million interdisciplinary research project funded through the NSF. The project, "ITR: Biometrics: Performance, Security and Societal Impact," investigates the technical, legal and privacy issues raised from broader applications of biometric system technology in airport security, computer access, or immigration. It is a joint initiative among researchers from Clarkson, West Virginia University, Michigan State University, St. Lawrence University, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Fingerprint scanning devices often use basic technology, such as an optical camera that take pictures of fingerprints which are then "read" by a computer. In order to assess how vulnerable the scanners are to spoofing, Schuckers and her research team made casts from live fingers using dental materials and used Play-Doh to create molds. They also assembled a collection of cadaver fingers.

In the laboratory, the researchers then systematically tested more than 60 of the faked samples. The results were a 90 percent false verification rate.

"The machines could not distinguish between a live sample and a fake one," Schuckers explained. "Since liveness detection is based on the recognition of physiological activities as signs of life, we hypothesized that fingerprint images from live fingers would show a specific changing moisture pattern due to perspiration but cadaver and spoof fingerprint images would not."

In live fingers, perspiration starts around the pore, and spreads along the ridges, creating a distinct signature of the process. Schuckers and her research team designed a computer algorithm that would detect this pattern when reading a fingerprint image. With the new detection system integrated into the device, less than 10 percent of the spoofed samples were able to fool the machine.

Addressing potential problems before they can occur is one of the goals of Schuckers' biometrics research. "As security systems based on biometrics continue to develop, it is important that people are reassured that their privacy is protected," she said. "How confident will someone feel giving his/her fingerprint over a public communication channel, such as the Internet? The technology needs to be solid and reliable and offer adequate privacy protection before biometric security systems will be accepted by the public."

Schuckers is also a member of the Center for Identification Technology, a cooperative research center headquartered at West Virginia University that brings together the NSF, industry and government agencies, and university researchers. She is director of the Biomedical Signal Analysis Laboratory at Clarkson. Schuckers joined the faculty of Clarkson in 2002. She received her doctoral degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1997.

Clarkson University, located in Potsdam, New York is a private, nationally ranked university with a reputation for developing innovative leaders in engineering, business, the sciences, health sciences and the humanities. At Clarkson, 3,000 high-ability students excel in an environment where learning is not only positive and supportive but spans the boundaries of traditional disciplines and knowledge. Faculty achieve international recognition for their research and scholarship and connect students to their leadership potential in the marketplace through dynamic, real-world problem solving.

CGB Spender