BBC: Huge driving test scam uncovered

Some people seem to have made a business out of taking driving tests for others at 500 pounds a time. Some of the crooks have taken hundreds of tests for other people.

I am not generally a fan of biometrics. They work well only in controlled situations where it is not possible to substitute a gel fingerprint or a moistened picture of one as the mythbusters did in a recent episode.

For this type of application they could work pretty well. The number of test centers is fairly limited and a driving license is a document that we might well want to tie to biometric authentication in any case.

Installing a reader at each test center would enable them to prevent any person from taking the test more than once without a significant risk of being caught. That would exclude both the professional crook and the person taking the test for a friend.