Biometrics of the future!

[Beef]

Hey guys,

I've got this problem in my far-future novel. I want to have a sort of biometric DNA security system on a computer, designed that only a certain person can access it. Except, unbeknownst to her, this person has an illigitemate son who at a later point in the story uses his blood to circumvent this system. Some research into dna profiling reveals that this is stupid, since only a moron would design a security system that could be fooled by blood relatives.

So, I was wondering if there's any way of getting around this? And, more broadly, what might biometric systems of the far future look like?

Many thanks

 

[Darkchild130]

A neural scanner, good luck mimicking someone else's exact brain patterns!

 

[Brian G Turner]

Sounds like the son is going to have to use some kind of tool to fool any kind of biometric test - perhaps a DNA enhancer film over his finger, or similar? Either way, I think any biometric system is focused on identifying individuals rather than families.

 

[martin321]

If someone takes a DNA sample from the person with access to the computer system, then they could use that to grow a clone who would have identical DNA (which should be able to fool the scanner). The person whose sample was taken might not know about their clone.

 

[Dave]

Could it be a twin brother rather than a son? What if the son was a clone?

Otherwise, it won't work. Only one individual is going to have the same DNA. It's foolproof.

edit: I see martin 321 already had that idea.

 

[Juliana]

Have the son stage an assault of some sort, where blood or other DNA matter is collected and used to bypass security?

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I'm confused by the "unbeknownst to her, this person has an illegitimate son..." part. It's hard for a "her" to have a son she doesn't know about, although your future technology may have accomplished it. It could be done, even now, in several ways. But I just wanted to verify that "her" is the one who has the unknown son.

Is she designing her own DNA security system for her computer? If she has no family that she knows about, she could have considered herself quite clever in using maternal DNA markers for some reason that seemed like a good idea at the time. Those would be the ones she got from her mother, and the ones she would pass on to her children, except she doesn't think she has any, so it would be safe. I could work up a chain of logic for this without too much effort -- assuming the lack of family, of course. Whether it would make scientific sense or not is up for debate among our more scientific sorts.

 

[Juliana]

It's hard for a "her" to have a son she doesn't know about, although your future technology may have accomplished it. It could be done, even now, in several ways.

Maybe something like unauthorized egg collection during some procedure? Good point, though.

 

[Biskit]

Any security system can be beaten - the trick is to make it too expensive, time-consuming etc. Anyway, here are some rambling thoughts:

If the system purely relies on DNA, then faking the DNA will get you through. My understanding is that to make you biometric system robust you want more than one 'test', so checking finger-print or retinal pattern as well as DNA is an option because identical twins do not have the same finger-print (not sure about the retinal pattern). Whatever you go for, the more cross-checks the system makes, the harder it becomes to crack, but you probably increase the chances of a false-negative i.e. the genuine person being rejected.

The other thing to consider is that unless you have an absolutely fantastic DNA gadget, it's only going to be able to check a fraction of the pattern. That has to open up routes for your impostor to circumvent the system.

If you want to get really wacky, take a look at: Understanding Genetics

 

[Beef]

Thanks for your contributions everyone, this is a plot problem that's sort of grown as i've been discovery-writing the novel. It's nagging at me like the worst sort of itch. I'm thinking that potential solutions might lie in tweaking the culture to accomodate this plot.

I'm confused by the "unbeknownst to her, this person has an illegitimate son..." part. It's hard for a "her" to have a son she doesn't know about, although your future technology may have accomplished it. It could be done, even now, in several ways. But I just wanted to verify that "her" is the one who has the unknown son.

Good question. It's rather (over)complicated. She mistakenly believes that the child is aborted, but she's been hoodwinked. The silly mare.

If you want to get really wacky, take a look at: Understanding Genetics

I can see this being very useful, thanks!

 

[Overread]

Does the character have any other blood family members? If so you could set it so that this specific character has access, but also has a necessity for others of the family to be able to access the machine and thus the DNA part of the authentication is set to detect blood relatives not just a specific individual.

Another child or a sister/brother could allow for such a setup. The individual part could then be bolstered with things like retinal and finger print scans to identify the individual and not just the family from the DNA.

Of course then you've got to think of a reason why they wouldn't just use individual DNA profiles for all family members. One such reason could be longevity of the setup combined with a security code not designed to be tampered with at any stage. Thus the first level of security is the DNA which would also allow other family members to "register" with the system as they are needed through the generations (it also builds a neat bit of code into the security setup which could be abused to allow registering of the child who isn't known about - this also allowing them to bypass the individual specific biometric parts of the test).

 

[Dave]

It is bigger than those arguments. Computer memory will no longer be limiting, if it isn't already. DNA could be analysed on any surface you touch. Forget identity cards - don't you think you will be tracked "everywhere" you go? If not by the government, then by corporations for "marketing" purposes.