Dactyloscopic X-Man?

Allow me to share an interesting and long standing situation in my life: Part of my job requires periodic evaluation of biometric (fingerprint) identification readers. It’s not something I find particularly stimulating, but I play an absolutely vital role in our ability to test these units. So vital in fact, that my fingers are always required – carrying a weighty responsibility to determine the product’s viability.

You see… I obviously have virtual fingerprints. To the naked human eye, they appear to exist. I mean, glancing down at my fingertips, I could be forgiven for thinking that I had a unique identity by virtue of some rather feint but nevertheless existant dermal papillae. Science assures us that with the aid of just one fingerprint (or even a portion thereof), anyone in the world can be distinctly identified.

Unfortunately, to the 21st century’s technological electronic eye, my fingers appear blank. Largely at any rate. Countless devices have passed our in-house tests quite admirably, doing a decent job of discerning one colleague from another. My fingers arrive however, and we’re suddenly talking about 1 in 10 accuracy, or worse, or mistaken identity, or… you know… “You’re a freak, you could be robbing banks?!”

Which has led me to wonder whether I’ll need to when our hallowed financial institutions begin to roll-out the promised biometric anti-fraud systems which will all rely on my having a fingerprint. Sorry… I mean a machine-readable fingerprint.
Am I concerned? Um, yeah… a little!
Am I little disturbed by the fact that even my South African Drivers Licence shows the words NO PRINT where my fingerprint would be. Um… yeah, that’s unusual?!
So is all of this doubt and anonymity taking a toll on my emotional wellbeing and quest for individuality. Well, honestly… no, but that would be pretty lame… right?

As a last thought, we received a new unit to test last week, and surprise, surprise, it actually appeared to work. It would recognise me. It would say “Hello Captain Awesome” when I presented my prints. It knew me! My confidence soared, my mood buoyed, and the world seemed once again to be at my fingertips. Until it rejected me more than 20 times in a row earlier today.

Ah well… back to the bank-robbing-drawing-board then.