Can a severed finger be used to access Touch ID?

In the movies, biometric security is often thwarted with a body part. Need to fool a retina scanner to enter a vault? Well just bring the correct eyeball and you've got the jewels.

Now that the iPhone 5s includes a fingerprint sensor, this has some people wondering if a severed finger can be used to access the Touch ID system. Luckily, Mashable has weighed in on the prospect, and as they say "your fingers are safe."

The [RF capacitive sensor] technology is built in a way that the [fingerprint] image has to be taken from a live finger,” says Sebastien Taveau, chief technology officer at Validity Sensors, a California based provider of fingerprint sensor solutions. “No one in biometrics wants to talk about cut fingers and dead bodies, but at the end of the day we are still asked to remove the fears of consumer and make sure that they understand that [a severed finger] will not work.”