Archive
Study: MRI scans of knees can be used for biometric identification
An automated recognition system that scans crowds to identify the people within them using not their faces, or their eyes, but their knees, has been proposed.
Computer scientist Lior Shamir put the idea forward in a study published in the International Journal of Biometrics. It states that an MRI system could be used to scan the legs of people as they walk through an area, mapping the bone structure inside their knees before matching it to a biometric record using software developed by Shamir.
Shamir looked at knee scans from 2,686 people, and found that his software could recognize individuals with 93 percent accuracy. It would Read more…
The Future of Identity
A new report has been published by the UK Government that looks at the Future of Identity over the next ten years.
Sponsored by the Home Office and published by Sir John Beddington, the Head of the Government Office for Science, the Foresight Future Identities (2013) report shows that ‘identity’ is not a simple notion. People can have many different overlapping identities which are fundamental to their individuality.
The report identifies three overlapping types of identities, which are broadly distinguished as social, biographical and biometric, which it defines as:
- Social identities are generated through roles and relationships between people, and the wider social and cultural context. These include identities which are socially mediated, such as family relationships, friendships, membership of communities, and Read more…
USDA Wants RFID Tracking Technology To Be Mandatory In US Food Stamp Program
(NTEB) “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” (Revelation 13:16-17)
In a little while, the above scene in Revelation 13 will become a global reality. People can no longer buy or sell without the mark of the beast. And sometimes that would mean no longer being able to eat!
The USDA is now considering biometric identification for all individuals who will want to benefit from their Food and Nutrition Services. The RFID chip may just soon be a must for everyone who does Read more…
Ecuador Implements “World’s First” Countrywide Facial- and Voice-Recognition System
Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador
Photo by ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP/Getty Images
The United States is often considered a world leader when it comes to deploying the latest biometric security and surveillance technologies. But it could have an unlikely new competitor: Ecuador.
According to Russian company the Speech Technology Center, the small Latin American country has successfully completed installation of “the world’s first biometric identification platform, at a nation-wide level, that combines voice and face identification capabilities.”
As I reported back in September, Speech Technology Center operates under the name SpeechPro in the United States. The company’s controversial technology enables authorities to build a massive database containing several million “voiceprints” of known criminals, suspects, or persons of interest. When authorities want to ID speakers on an intercepted Read more…
Indonesia advances world’s most ambitious biometric-based national identity card project
Tampa — You might not guess that Indonesia, a large country that’s basically an archipelago of over 70,000 islands that has infrastructure issues in electricity and limited bandwidth, is the nation rolling out the world’s most ambitious biometrics-based national identity card project for its citizens. But it is.
Indonesia is spending $600 million on a project to give 172 million residents a national identity card that will be used for a wide range of purposes, including proving identity for voter registration, passport issuance, tax and financial matters, and much more. This electronic national identity card , called the e-KTP, is a government effort to get millions of citizens to enroll at registration centers where their fingerprint, iris and face are captured as images through biometric equipment and personal information stored as a record associated with each electronic identity card. According to Dr. Husni Fahmi, who heads up the e-KTP project in Indonesia, the hope is all will be in place before the next election in 2014.
“It’s a national ID and Read more…
Smile, the Government Is Watching: Next Generation Identification
“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement was scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984
Brace yourselves for the next wave in the surveillance state’s steady incursions into our lives. It’s coming at us with a lethal one-two punch.
To start with, there’s the government’s integration of facial recognition software and other biometric markers into its identification data programs. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is a $1 billion boondoggle that is aimed at dramatically expanding the government’s current ID database from a fingerprint system to a facial recognition system. NGI will use a variety of biometric data, cross-referenced against the nation’s growing network of surveillance cameras to not only track your every move but create a permanent “recognition” file on you within the government’s massive databases.
By the time it’s fully operational in 2014, NGI will serve as a vast data storehouse of “iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.” One component of NGI, the Universal Face Workstation, already contains some Read more…
Is Privacy Dead? 4 Government and Private Entities Conspiring to Track Everything You Do Online and Off
Americans’ personal privacy is being crushed by the rise of a four-headed corporate-state surveillance system. The four “heads” are: federal government agencies; state and local law enforcement entities; telecoms, web sites & Internet “apps” companies; and private data aggregators (sometimes referred to as commercial data warehouses).
Conventional analysis treats these four domains of data gathering as separate and distinct; government agencies focus on security issues and corporate entities are concerned with commerce. Some overlap can be expected as, for example, in case of a terrorist attack or an online banking fraud. In both cases, an actual crime occurred.
But what happens when the boundary separating or restricting corporate-state collaboration, e.g., an exceptional crime-fighting incident, erodes and becomes the taken-for-granted operating environment, the new normal? Perhaps most troubling, what happens when the traditional safeguards offered by “watchdog” courts or regulatory organizations no longer seem to matter? What does it say that the entities designed to Read more…
FBI launches $1 billion nationwide facial recognition system
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun rolling out its new $1 billion biometric Next Generation Identification (NGI) system. In essence, NGI is a nationwide database of mugshots, iris scans, DNA records, voice samples, and other biometrics, that will help the FBI identify and catch criminals — but it is how this biometric data is captured, through a nationwide network of cameras and photo databases, that is raising the eyebrows of privacy advocates.
Until now, the FBI relied on IAFIS, a national fingerprint database that has long been due an overhaul. Over the last few months, the FBI has been pilot testing a facial recognition system — and soon, detectives will also be able to search the system for other biometrics such as DNA records and iris scans. In theory, this should result in much faster positive identifications of criminals and fewer unsolved cases.
According to New Scientist, facial recognition systems have reached the point where they can Read more…
Alabama to require biometric scans for prison visitors
The Alabama Department of Corrections has implemented a new policy that requires visitors to state prisons to have their fingerprint scanned before entering prison facilities. It is the first state to implement the requirement. Alabama has 29 correctional facilities with approximately 25,500 adult inmates.
Brian Corbett, the Department of Corrections spokesman said: “Our IT department came up with the idea of scanning fingerprints as part of an upgrade. We still require visitors to have a government-issued photo ID, and that requirement will remain in place. But there are times when someone else resembles the photo on an ID. Scanning the fingerprint of visitors verifies they are who they say they are.”
Corbett said scanning fingerprints makes the Read more…
Minority Report: Fiction Has Become Reality
“The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we’re part of the medium. The scary thing is, we’ll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.”—Steven Spielberg
It was a mere ten years ago that Steven Spielberg’s action film Minority Report, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, offered movie audiences a special effect-laden techno-vision of a futuristic world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. And if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will bring you under control.
The year is 2054. The place is Washington, DC. Working in a city in which there has been no murder committed in six years—due in large part to his efforts combining widespread surveillance with behavior prediction technologies—John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise), Chief of the Department of Pre-Crime in Washington, DC, uses precognitive technology to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage—that is, to prevent crimes before they happen. Unfortunately for Anderton, the technology, which proves to be fallible, identifies him as the next would-be criminal, and he flees. In the ensuing chase, Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer networks to track its citizens.
Seemingly taking its cue from science fiction, technology has moved so Read more…
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