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Comment by eplanit | Hacker News Reader

Absurd. Cardiac 'patterns' change over time, and altered with heart disease/dysfunction. Bio-medical based authentication must rely on non-changing biological characteristics.

<sarcasm>Gotta hand it to them for covering the bases, though.</sarcasm>

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Ideally, passwords should change over time as well. If the change is continuous rather than abrupt, it can be picked up on, and the password steadily changed with the pattern (you'd be let in with an 98% match, which would then overwrite the previous pattern. A 95% match would ask for secondary identification first). Then, if someone tries to use a previous recording of your heartbeat to unlock your computer, it won't work!

I have to agree, it's absolutely ridiculous.

Using cardiac patterns for login are also prone to "denial of service attacks". Because if I scare someone, suddenly they will be unable to access their phone.

Regardless, just reading through this patent, I find it difficult/impossible to believe that there isn't prior art for this.

Plus, it discriminates against the nonliving.

Not quite as ridiculous as it sounds, there are already issues with people getting access to digital information of deceased relatives (encrypted hard drives, social networking sites, email etc.).

Not just the nonliving, also the living with artificial hearts with no heartbeat:

http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/09/30/1348224/Artificia...

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