biometric gunsafe

O.K., all jokes aside. Why is your client so bent on having a full hand scanner ?. I can't see (and I believe safe companies can't see) any logical reason WHY anyone would want or need an entire hand to be scanned, when total security can be covered with a one digit finger print scan unit. I have seen in government installations a single digit finger print scanner linked with a retina scanner directly above, but we are talking government 'maximum security vaults'. If your client is on a budget of around $3,000 then he is just pis*ing in the wind & wasting your time. Cheers.

OK: I haven't heard even rumor of a preconstructed safe that uses a whole-hand scanner, or even a whole-hand scanner as a reasonably available component... but I haven't had any reason to look.

The closest I know to commercial/affordable whole-hand scanners were the hand _geometry_ scanners (measuring finger length) -- which are probably less secure than a single-finger print scanner, and which don't have the sexy hand-against-the-reading-surface behavior he's looking for.

Or sequence of fingers on a single scanner, if you can get one that ties into software and reports which it matched... Decent suggestion, if someone really wants More Magic.

I *hope* that by now fingerprint scanners are also taking a pulse measurement, which is the easiest way of guarding against some attempts to bypass this. I'd also hope that they have the ability to recognize different fingers so using a different finger would be a duress function that opens the lock but sets off a silent alarm.

Greetings.

Speed under pressure. He wants a full hand scanner over a single-digit scanner because he believes that under high life/death stress conditions, a full hand scanner would be more easily accessible, and less prone to error.

Full-hand readers are not as accurate, or from what i read they are not, as single-digit readers. His primary concern is not the 1000:1 error ratio with a full-hand reader, but that he believes that a hand can more easily be slapped onto a hand reader than a single digit stuck into a finger reader. I searched for studies on the subject, but as one would imagine, i did not find anything. This is where some government access would be handy (pun intended).

So, i am not sure why various people are placing a higher price tag on full hand readers when they are not as "secure" as single-digit readers. Could be hardware costs. I could be mistaken on the whole accuracy thing, but i have not read anything countering the accuracy of singles over full hands.

FWIW, his budget probably more along the lines of $3k per unit.

.times enemy

Steve Paris wrote:

Greets.

I am not sure who mentioned it, but after trying to find this thing, and asking average gun peeps, various diamond dealers and the likes about it, thoughts of collecting some good talent and designing my own biometric safe(s) are abounding. Hehe, anyone want to fund my project?

.te

Joe Kesselman wrote:

If that's what you want, I recommend the combination gun safes which use buttons arranged to fall naturally under the fingers. The one I'm thinking of has a spring-loaded door so it _pops_ open when the combo has been entered. More than sufficiently secure, more than sufficiently fast, self-contained so he doesn't have to worry about power loss... and affordable.

Not as sexy. But does he want his gadget, or does he want a solution to the actual problem?

Greetings.

This is from a book entitled, "CIA, Inc.: Espionage and the Craft of Business Intelligence," by F.W. Rustmann, Jr.. (ISBN 1-57488-388-7) (paperback)

(page 72) "After several weeks of monitoring, we determined that our targets had constructed a room-within-a-room for their most confidential briefings and discussions. This is actually a pretty standard security practice for many embassies around the globe. We just didn't expect it from this particular Asian embassy.

The United States, for example, uses a transparent Plexiglas structure nick-named a "bubble" in most of its embassies. The bubble is actually a room large enough to hold a conference table and chairs of sufficent size to hold the embassy's entire country team. The bubble is assembled inside another room, which is shielded with copper coils so no transmissions can emanate from it. Therefore, anyone carrying an audio transmitter into the bubble would be unable to broadcast the signal to the outside. The fact that the bubble is constructed of transparent plastic also permits easy overall visual inspection, so if an audio device is somehow connected to it, it would be easily seen and disabled.

This particular room-within-a-room was certainly not that sophisticated, but it did prevent the type of audio penetration through a common wall that we were attempting."

I do not know what is true and otherwise here, but it is interesting.

For anyone really interested ...

snipped-for-privacy@marget.com wrote:

Times Enemy,

Do you recall a sitcom from the late 60's called Get Smart?