Sir

Although biometric technology is believed to be a product of the hi-tech era, it is not, in fact, our generation's invention. People were using biometric technology long before the word 'biometric' was coined (see Nature 418, 583; 200210.1038/418583a and Nature 420, 15; 200210.1038/420015b). Not only that, but attempts to fool it were as common in ancient times as they are today.

The oldest written testimony of identity theft we can find dates back to biblical times, when Jacob fraudulently used the identity of his twin brother Esau to benefit from their father's blessing. Genesis describes a combination of hand scan and voice recognition that Isaac used to attempt to verify his son's identity, without knowing that the smooth-skinned Jacob had wrapped his hands in kidskin: “And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, 'The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau'. And he recognized him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau's hands.” The false acceptance which resulted from this very inaccurate biometric test had historical consequences of unmatched proportions.

In Greek mythology, too, we are likely to find surprises. A primitive tactile sensor used by the one-eyed Cyclops after Odysseus and colleagues had destroyed his monocular face-recognition system — and which they evaded by hiding under his sheep — was actually the first biometric lock, operated more than two millennia before James Bond conquered the screen with his hi-tech gadgets.

Turning the dusty pages of the classics, we discover a wide spectrum of biometric technologies, from voice recognition — triumphantly deceived by Dante's Gianni Schicchi, who impersonated a dead man to change a will in his own favour — to the unbeatable feature-matching face-recognition algorithm implemented by the fairy-tale heroine Little Red Riding Hood, who was unconvinced by a wolf disguised as her grandmother.

Scientists would be envious to find out that many state-of-the-art approaches in biometrics are merely a rediscovery: to quote Ecclesiastes, “nothing is new under the sun”.