Unintended consequences of biometrics

I saw this today on a forbes website. It was in one of their screwy slide shows so I won’t link to it.

VVT Finnish Walking Bio-Identification Phone
Cell phones and laptops are easy marks for thieves, but a group of scientists at the VVT Technical Research Center in Finland has come up with a way to sour the spoils of such high-tech villainy. The VVT scientists would equip mobile phones and notebook computers with sensors and software capable of analyzing and saving their owners’ walking patterns. If the machine determines that it is being carried around by a person with an unfamiliar stride, the gadget will go into a lockdown mode until a password is entered. This sort of passive bio-identification is far easier to use and more likely to be enabled than active methods such as fingerprint ID and code entry. Once such technology becomes widespread, it could have the effect of making gadget theft pointless for criminals.

Imagine… You’re out hiking. You trip and injure your leg. You start limping back towards the road but realize your leg is really hurting. You try to call out… Your phone doesn’t work because it doesn’t recognize how you’re walking with the injured leg… Oops. Now you’re stuck in the wilderness, within cell range, with a bum cell phone.