Biometrics technology is still far from ideal

REGARDING your article "Passport to the biometric era" (News, September 15), the six-month Biometric Enrolment Trial undertaken on behalf of the Home Office last year involved 10,000 people across the UK.

It was this trial which revealed the astonishingly high verification failure rates that biometric technology still exhibits: failure rates of one in 20 for iris scans, one in five for fingerprints and one in three for facial recognition.

Furthermore, these failure rates were considerably higher for disabled participants.

Biometric technology is still very immature and there is no reason to believe that it will become sufficiently robust and reliable in time for the government's intended roll-out of compulsory ID cards.

All current biometric scanners can be easily fooled by relatively unsophisticated methods. The consequences of relying on these measurements could cause lifelong inconvenience for people who have their biometric data hijacked by criminals. The Government should abandon its efforts to create an expensive and intrusive national biometric database.

Geraint Bevan, Leyden Court, Glasgow