Usability of holographic data storage technology for biometric data in governmental ID documents

ii Management summary This report describes the opportunities and limitations of the holographic storage technology based on the PhenoStor ® storage system developed by Bayer Innovation with regard to its possible use in governmental ID documents. With respect to verification Governmental ID projects are characterized by the two components 'biometric' and 'storage of reference data'. All corresponding aspects are taken into account when evaluating the options of new technologies. For this purpose, the new holographic storage technology is compared to other card technologies already used in public applications. Besides the fact that this technology provides new solutions for ID card projects, the technology is compared with state–of-the-art card based solutions considering criteria such as:-Memory capacity-Security, barrier to access, manipulation or copy protected data-Usability of electronic signature function-Robustness-Convenience of use-Costs With regard to biometrics, some national legal regulations already require the storage of one face image and two fingerprint images per document. Other regulations require processing capabilities of the ID document. In most cases these legal regulations endorse the leadership role of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which has developed standard specifications for machine readable passports and other ID documents with biometrics. The ICAO recommendations are based on the state-of-the-art technology of the chip card and biometrics industry, as they were analyzed basically between 2002 and 2004. In consequence, ICAO decided to use RFID for reading biometric data out of governmental ID documents. The capacity for storing biometric information on ID documents should be as high as possible. As an option ICAO recommends a microprocessor chip to authenticate the memory and to prevent unauthorized data access. Regarding biometric technologies, ICAO considers optionally the use of the face image, fingerprint image and iris image, which needs to be interoperable on a global basis. This requires the use of complete image data, which means a size of acceptable compressed images ranging from 10 kB for fingerprint and face images to about 30 kB for iris images. This document describes a new storage technology for ID cards based on holographic memory, which is characterized by high storage capacity and its ability to store data in a highly secure way: Holograms store data in an optical way to represent data in a non-digitalized way. Though it is still a proprietary technology, it has a high usage potential due to its high storage capacity, its implicit data protection and security, robustness and cost reduction. Hybrid …