Biometrics: reading answers and analysis
Biometrics identify people by physical traits: hand scanners at a Montreal gym and the Atlanta Olympics, voiceprints for Californian homes, face scanners for Japanese banks and Malaysian airports, fingerprints for welfare claims. Prices fell enough to make the systems commercial, but critics fear privacy abuse and stigma, even as acceptance grows.
Questions 27-40 · 14 marks · 2 question blocks
Where the answers sit
The headings (27-33) cover B to H (A is the example). The people-to-system matching (34-40) needs A, D, E and F.
Questions 27-33
B is full of numbers (facilities, companies, revenue), and C explains how matching works. D is fingerprints against welfare fraud, and E the best-selling handkey. F covers who is planning what worldwide, G the privacy objections, and H acceptance growing anyway. 'Early trials' and 'Systems to avoid' are traps.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 27 | iv | — |
| 28 | vii | — |
| 29 | viii | — |
| 30 | iii | — |
| 31 | ii | — |
| 32 | i | — |
| 33 | x | — |
Questions 34-40
Hand scanners serve three groups: Montreal sports students, Olympic athletes, and employees in the first commercial system. Face scanners serve two: Malaysian air passengers and Japanese bank customers. Welfare claimants give fingerprints, and Californian homeowners use voiceprints.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 34 | B | — |
| 35 | B | — |
| 36 | E | — |
| 37 | A | — |
| 38 | B | — |
| 39 | D | — |
| 40 | E | — |
The questions most people get wrong
B. The first commercial biometric, in 1974, was a hand reader an American firm used to monitor employee attendance.
x. H says support is growing and biometrics may be a technology 'whose time has come', which is accepting the inevitable.
E. Malaysia plans face scanners at airports to match passengers with luggage. Iris scanners are for Japanese cash machines.
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Cambridge IELTS 2, Test 3, Reading Passage 3. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.