The Role of Biometrics in Virtual Communities and Digital Governments

This chapter is intended to introduce the role of biometrics in virtual communities and digital governments. Key steps for a biometric system to complete an identification or verification / authentication process are introduced. Main biometric techniques, such as fingerprint recognition, face recognition, iris recognition, and voice recognition, for the security purposes of identification and authentication are included. The key features need to be extracted and technical challenges posed to each individual technique will also be covered. We will also discuss the applications, requirements, technical limitations, and issues of privacy intrusion, and point out the trends in the development of biometric systems in the future.