Biometric Fail reported
Friday, January 2nd, 2009 by adamA South Korean woman entered Japan on a fake passport in April 2008 by slipping through a state-of-the-art biometric immigration control system using special tape on her fingers to alter her fingerprints, it was learned Wednesday…
During questioning, the woman allegedly told the immigration bureau that she had bought a forged passport from a South Korean broker who told her to purchase an air ticket for Aomori Airport.
The woman also was quoted as saying that the broker gave her the special tape with someone else’s fingerprints on, and that she slipped past the biometric recognition system by holding her taped index fingers over the scanner.
So reports the Yomiuri Shimbun, “S. Korean woman ‘tricked’ airport fingerprint scan.” The story doesn’t mention a name, but if anyone has more details, I’d love to know more.
[Update: DanT has some interesting speculation in the comments about both operational aspects of the entry being an inside job, and that the bureaucracy in question would re-assign the insider rather than prosecute.]