Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing biometrics. What are biometrics? Well biometric processing so for example, facial recognition, fingerprint, that kind of thing and we are talking about this in a digital context that's pretty much part and parcel with Thai Immigration checkpoints these days. You are going to be dealing with biometrics now if you are passing through an Immigration checkpoint, it's pretty much just a given. Now the reason for the video, and it's kind of, we are really kind of in like Buck Roger's Land it feels like sometimes. We're really, it's like some of the things I even talk about and I have to admit I view this channel as somewhat banal in that I never thought we would be talking about topics that would be overly interesting on the Integrity Legal Thailand channel. I thought it would be just talking about legal stuff. Obviously we kind of got into more topical things in the news but this is actually really relevant to Immigration, just sort of the present state of Immigration as we know it right now. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Drug dealers new look doesn't fool police. I really urge people, check out that article in detail, a lot of information in there but I want to go ahead and read two excerpts here that I thought were really interesting and then I'll get into my analysis. Quoting directly: “Police have arrested a suspected drug dealer who underwent extensive plastic surgery to make himself look Korean and evaded capture for three months." Quoting further: "When the suspect was first detained on an assault charge, Officers found two kilograms of narcotics in liquid form and 290 MDMA pills in his possession. But he was able to escape detention at the time and underwent extensive surgery to significantly change his appearance." 

The reason for making this video is so people understand that, look biometrics doesn't care how much plastic surgery you get. Now it's not in the article but I am kind of reading between the lines. I have got to imagine at some point this person's fingerprints, or even although I don't know, maybe plastic surgery can fool biometric facial recognition, I don't know, I'm not an expert on that but I have to imagine at some point when they were arresting and processing this individual, they took fingerprints and because they had this individual arrested in the past where presumably they took fingerprints, the fact that this person who once apparently looked Thai and now apparently looks Korean, the fact that they were fingerprinted doesn't matter how they look. Biometrics is biometrics. You can't really change your fingerprints that I know of. Yeah I'm aware, I have watched Sci-Fi and action movies where they put little things on your fingers, like a glove thing on your hand so that you can evade fingerprint detectors. Every time I have ever watched those, I remember watching the movie "Barbed Wire" of all things with Pamela Anderson. Now bear in mind, I was a young man, that was why I was watching it, because Lord knows the plot didn't really deserve maybe the recognition of the academy or anything. That said, it basically has the plot of Casablanca but I just remember being a kid at the time and there were retinal scans that they had to get through and they had these contact lenses that they used to evade the retinal scan and I just remember thinking even as a kid, I was like "well what if a gust of wind blows and like the contact comes out!" There is a million ways that can go wrong. 

At the end of the day what I am trying to say here is you can do all kinds of sophisticated things I guess to try and fool these biometric scanners, but I am just saying if I am a betting man, I am going to bet on the biometric scanner every day over whatever you think is out there that you can use to try and fool it.