Online and Digital Identification, Securing Web 2.0, PKI and Digital Certificates

EU’s TURBINE Project aims to better protect biometrics

Friday, August 29, 2008

TURBINE (TrUsted Revocable Biometric IdeNtitiEs), kind of a complicated acronym, but that goes along with the complexity of the project.

The European Union-funded project involves finding a way to securely identify users by means of fingerprints, in which the biometric data used is protected by cryptographic technology. The EU has given the project more than $9 million.

The cryptographic methods developed in the project aim to make it so the data generated from the fingerprint for authentication purposes cannot be used to reconstruct the original fingerprint. In addition, users will be able to create several “pseudo identities” - each for a different application - with the same fingerprint and revoke identities if desired, i.e. declare them invalid.

With the proposed identity management scheme, users will be able to manage their identities on a smart card or other type of token. The identities can be official, legal identities that are used for e-government applications, as well as for transactions with local government. Also, pseudo identities can be administered for Internet services, bonus programs, and other purposes. All identities of can be proven from the same biometric without a third party, such as the service provider, being able to create a link between the identities stored on the card.

To ensure that the developments meet the needs of the various potential market segments and comply with European and national regulations on data protection, the consortium is obtaining advice from data protection experts from various European institutions and representative market segments, such as banking, e-health, e-government and airport security.

Integration of the smart card as a personal token for managing identities is Sagem Orga’s main job in the TURBINE project. Other participants n the project include: Sagem Sécurité (project coordinator), Philips Research (Netherlands), the University of Twente, (Netherlands), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Gjøvik University College (Norway), Precise Biometrics (Sweden), Cryptolog (France), 3D-GAA S.A. (Greece) and ARTTIC (France).

Read more about the TURBINE Project here. [end] 

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