Is Biometrics ID Security Good Enough?

United Airlines this week announced that it would begin rolling out Clear's biometric pre-screening at its hub airports, including Newark Liberty International and Houston George Bush Intercontinental. The system works by verifying a flier's fingerprints or eye scan.
Clear already is available at about 60 locations throughout the United States. It offers a system that utilizes biometrics to speed preapproved travellers to the front of the security lane, and even ahead of TSA Pre-Check fliers.
United Airlines joins Delta Airlines in offering the service to fliers -- and Clear's technology also is in use at participating stadiums and arenas that require an ID check for entry. However, Clear is just one of several companies to begin developing this the biometric screening technology, and airports already have been struggling with how do deal with competing but not compatible systems.
There now are at least 53 biometric systems used just by the aviation industry, and dozens more by other industries, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. Most don't see eye-to-eye, in that their respective databases aren't shared.
Getting all the competing systems to work together is just one of the challenges that biometric screening companies will have to deal with in the near future to make this technology universally embraced as an alternative for traditional identification.

History of Biometrics
It is easy to think of technology that can recognize a unique fingerprint instantly as being a modern marvel of the 21st century, but its roots actually go back to the end of the 19th century. Argentine anthropologist Juan Vucetich first catalogued fingerprints in 1891, and just two years later that helped Inspector Eduardo Alvarez identify Francisca Rojas as the actual killer of her two sons.
Then there is the story of Will and William West -- two men who were unrelated yet nearly identical in appearance. Each was serving a prison sentence at Leavenworth Penitentiary, but Will West was convicted of a minor crime, while William West already was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. The prison had almost no way of telling the men apart, but then turned to a new technology -- fingerprint identification.
French handwriting expert and early biometrics researcher Alphonse Bertillon already had created an identification system that included a "mug shot," along with detailed description of an inmate's facial features. Normally that system was enough to differentiate individuals from one another. However, given that the West men looked so similar, something else was needed.
As it happened, Bertillon also made a breakthrough in the advancement of dactyloscopy, which can analyse the patterns of fingerprints. As each individual's fingerprints are unique, it was enough to determine which West was which!