Exorcism of Ignorance as a Proxy for Rational Knowledge: The Lessons of Handwriting Identification "Expertise"

Risinger, D. Michael; Denbeaux, Mark; Saks, Michael J.

doi:10.2307/3312276

Cited by 75 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…To the best of our knowledge, there were no professional document examiners in our preliminary study. We caution the reader that the proficiency of professional document examiners compared to that of laypersons in detection forgeries remains a controversial topic (see for example, [6], [31]). Indeed, while recent studies [11], [12] seem to indicate that a well-trained subset of the population can perform significantly better than chance at this task, these results are still being openly debated.…”

Section: An Alternative Perspective: Forgery Detection By Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forgery Quality and Its Implications for Behavioral Biometric Security

Ballard

Lopresti

Monrose

2007

IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybern. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract-Biometric security is a topic of rapidly growing importance in the areas of user authentication and cryptographic key generation. In this paper, we describe our steps toward developing evaluation methodologies for behavioral biometrics that take into account threat models which have been largely ignored. We argue that the pervasive assumption that forgers are minimally motivated (or, even worse, naïve) is too optimistic and even dangerous. Taking handwriting as a case in point, we show through a series of experiments that some users are significantly better forgers than others, that such forgers can be trained in a relatively straightforward fashion to pose an even greater threat, that certain users are easy targets for forgers, and that most humans are a relatively poor judge of handwriting authenticity and hence their unaided instincts cannot be trusted. Additionally, to overcome current labor-intensive hurdles in performing more accurate assessments of system security, we present a generative attack model based on concatenative synthesis that can provide a rapid indication of the security afforded by the system. We show that our generative attacks match or exceed the effectiveness of forgeries rendered by the skilled humans we have encountered.

show abstract

Section: An Alternative Perspective: Forgery Detection By Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forgery Quality and Its Implications for Behavioral Biometric Security

Ballard

Lopresti

Monrose

2007

IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybern. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…31 (Risinger et al, 1989;Risinger & Saks, 1996;Mnookin, 2001b). 32 (Cole, 2000(Cole, , 2001Mnookin, 2001a;Epstein, 2002;Imwinkelried, 2002;Sombat, 2002;Cole, 2003;Lawson, 2003;Mnookin, 2003;Saks, 2003;Benedict, 2004;Cole, 2004aCole, , 2004bSteele, 2004;Cole, 2005a;Schwinghammer, 2005;Zabell, 2005;Cole, 2006a;Meintjes-van der Walt, 2006;Cole, 2007;Haber & Haber, 2008;Mnookin, 2008;Haber & Haber, 2009).…”

unclassified

Scientific Evidence in Europe -- Admissibility, Evaluation and Equality of Arms

Champod

Vuille

2011

International Commentary on Evidence

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study was commissioned by the European Committee on Crime Problems at the Council of Europe to describe and discuss the standards used to asses the admissibility and appraisal of scientific evidence in various member countries. After documenting cases in which faulty forensic evidence seems to have played a critical role, the authors describe the legal foundations of the issues of admissibility and assessment of the probative value in the field of scientific evidence, contrasting criminal justice systems of accusatorial and inquisitorial tradition and the various risks that they pose in terms of equality of arms. Special attention is given to communication issues between lawyers and scientific experts. The authors eventually investigate possible ways of improving the system. Among these mechanisms, emphasis is put on the adoption of a common terminology for expressing the weight of evidence. It is also proposed to adopt an harmonized interpretation framework among forensic experts rooted in good practices of logical inference.

show abstract

“…The skill claimed by FHEs is derived from traditional textbooks [1][2][3][4][5][6], journal articles, educational workshops, mentor training, proficiency tests and years of practice examining thousands of signatures. In spite of what would appear to be a robust and entrenched forensic identification science, the publication and subsequent debate in series of articles [7,8] critical of the discipline has resulted in prompting the discipline to introduce studies aimed at elucidating the character of the skills that FHEs claim.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%