Hitachi has produced a finger tip scanner that scans patterns of micro veins beneath the surface of the skin rather than finger prints and has managed to get the scanners installed in ATM machines in Warsaw, Poland. Poland's cooperative BPS bank claims to be the first bank in Europe to install biometric identity verification on it's ATMs.
Hitachi claims the likelihood of a false positive is about 1 in 1 million, or roughly as accurate as an iris scan which is generally accepted as the most secure of methods to date. Perhaps I watch too many spy movies but the first thing that came to my mind was quickly dispelled as I read further in CNN's article, "And before you ask, no -- it doesn't work with fingers that have been chopped off," said Peter Jones, Hitachi's head of security and solutions in Europe. (Admit it, you were thinking it too!)
I hadn't realized that Poland was so forward thinking but Jone's goes on to say "It's no surprise that Poland is the first in Europe. They are one of the most proactive at addressing the challenges of the information age. When they host the EU presidency in 2012, they want to say to the world: 'Look at what we've achieved.'"
