The Financial Times reports that “the French National Commission for Data Protection and the Liberties (CNIL) has granted approval to a the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) — to collect biometric data as part of its efforts to ensure the security of the GMAT test, the entry test for business school.”

The GMAT test uses palm vein identification technology, which uses a near-infrared light to capture a palm vein pattern This generates a unique encrypted biometric template that is matched against the registered candidate’s palm vein pattern, so ensuring that the person taking the test is the registered candidate. GMAC says the technology is a highly reliable form of authentication because it does not use trace technology, no image is ever stored, and the data cannot be read by other devices.

Last year, the admissions council began testing the technology in South Korea and India, and said it would likely expand to other countries this year, including the United States.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 and is filed under Anonymity, Biometrics, Civil liberties, Fourth Amendment, Identification, International, Security, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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