The iris of a living been change with age ?
mingodad opened this issue · 9 comments
Hello !
Nice idea and project, thanks for starting it !
When reading the introduction about one possible way to unique identify each human been using it's iris this question came to my mind:
Does the iris of a living been change with age ? If so how to update it's unique id ?
Cheers !
Already partially answered on the introduction, it's used as seed to generate public/private keys.
But still curious about changes with age and how to update just in case of forgotten/lost passwords.
They do change over the course of years (e.g. see here), so it is recommended that people take new scans every couple of years accordingly.
If you have to accommodate such longer-lasting identification, then @mmatk's recommendation seems the best option.
It sounds like rather than recommend update should be mandatory in the protocol as people tend to put things off.
The question of identity is much more philosophical and nuanced than even hinted at in the white paper but this probably isn't the place to go into that.
The question I have regarding iris scans is how early they would be useful. A person becomes a citizen, at least of every existing state as far as I know, at birth. Are the irises of a new born usable? I know that eye color, in Caucasian babies for example, doesn't settle until at least 9 months of age. I don't doubt that research will discover this if it isn't known already but I question the scope of the white paper.
Also, the question is if iris is even unique among people. I do not know of any proof of that. At least for fingerprints there is no proof of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM1QgwaKv4s
It will certainly require multiple data points to establish identity. However, your assertion that the odds are low of someone, my spouse for example, having my phone, know my pin code, and even have a photograph of both of my eyes is debatable. Spouses impersonate each other for various reasons all the time.
It seems to me that there is a perfectly unique seed to be used. Upon birth -- along with whatever vaccines are still important by then and such -- the combination of your blood type with a section of DNA that is peculiar to an individual. DNA allows identifying signature sequences that can be used as to detect individuals. Changes of even one base pair can be detected.
That would probably still necessitate updates to your keys, but those would be needed due to medical situations and other things which can alter the DNA. In general, a person's genes stay put as far as any identifying signature sequences. Because nobody is actually going to use more than one form of ID, regardless of what the platform would be best with, the way to get them to still use the system is by making it convenient enough to actually use.
So, whatever method the key will be used with, the only really safe way would be to have their public key (much like a btc wallet) be different each time they use it, automatically.
Some of those comments being orthogonal to the point, I'll short myself:
Individually Identifying DNA will remain robust and nearly impossible to attack for a long time. This issue needs to be addressed by more than just computer scientists. Currently the best we have is a literal by-hand signature, and paper mail.