JLM: Author and professor Dorothy E. Denning explains why good biometrics systems will succeed without keeping secrets. Both direct and concise, it's worth reading. She mentions two startup companies whose biometrics technologies look promising.

Decius: There are so many problems with this I don't even know where to start. I just LOVE how she brushes off the privacy concerns with a few words at the bottom of the essay, and she doesn't even mention the accuracy problems and the difficulty of accuratly determining "liveness." In network computers there is a huge problem with trust of remote biometric identifiers...

The key problem with this essay is that biometrics don't eliminate passwords in most implementations and really don't have anything to do with the problem with passwords. Basically, a single sign on infrastructure is the problem, biometrics or no. Fortunately, Biometrics are not the least expensive solution to the "password problem" and for that reason law enforcement is likely to be denied their dream of having your fingerprint taken every time you engage in a commercial transaction.

Information Security Magazine