As Cory Doctorow notes, why this headline should single out Japanese girls as being particularly at risk – and that this is the appeal of it – is much more disturbing than the fact that someone figured out how to lift fingerprints that can be used to access biometric authentication systems from photos taken using an ‘ordinary camera’ at a considerable distance (3 metres). He explains the popularity of the news story thus:
“I give credit to the news-hook: this is being reported as a risk that young women put themselves to when they flash the peace sign in photos. Everything young women do — taking selfies, uptalking, vocal fry, using social media — even reading novels! — is presented as a) unique to young women (even when there’s plenty of evidence that the trait or activity is spread among people of all genders and ages) and b) an existential risk to the human species (as in, “Why do these stupid girls insist upon showing the whole world their naked fingertips? Slatterns!”)“
The technical feat intrigued me, so I found a few high-res scans of pictures of Churchill making the V sign, taken on very good medium or large format film cameras (from that era, 5″x4″ press cameras were most common, though some might have been taken on smaller formats and/or cropped) with excellent lenses, by professional photographers, under various lighting conditions, from roughly that distance. While, on the very best, with cross-lighting, a few finger wrinkles and creases were partly visible, there was no sign of a single whorl, and nothing like enough detail for even a very smart algorithm to figure out the rest. So, with a tiny fraction of the resolution, I don’t think you could just lift an image from the web, a phone, or even from a good compact camera to steal someone’s fingerprints unless the range were much closer and you were incredibly lucky with the lighting conditions and focus. That said, a close-up selfie using an iPhone 7+, with focus on the fingers, might well work, especially if you used burst mode to get slightly different images (I’m guessing you could mess with bas relief effects to bring out the details). You could also do it if you set out to do it. With something like a good 400mm-equivalent lens, in bright light, with low ISO, cross-lit, large sensor camera (APS-C or higher), high resolution, good focus and small aperture, there would probably be enough detail.
Address of the bookmark: https://boingboing.net/2017/01/12/moral-panic-japanese-girls-ri.html
