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13 October 2015

Please Identify

In yet another comedic scene, a man with laryngitis is barred entrance to his workplace by the voice-identification system. The president appears and enters the manual override code. The lowly worker stands in awe and fear for a moment, realizing he has seen the code. He passes through a few irrational fears of being forced to open the company doors at gunpoint until the system informs the president that his password has expired and asks him to follow an email link to reset it. The president complains about a new phone and the scene ends with this all-powerful administrator struggling to answer security questions to access his email.

At some point, security measures become absurd, but long before that point they become frustrating obstacles to their users. Perhaps privacy and a simple, reliable method of identification are simply mutually exclusive goals. But, whether that be the case or not, the modern mash-ups that attempt both often fail at both with a spectacularly appended layer of irritation.