After kicking off facial recognition technology, the Department of Motor Vehicle says the state was arresting people by the thousands for possible identity fraud. They were even a bit surprised at the number of people trying to cheat the system.Read the whole thing for an education about how lax issuance of legitimate ID documents enables crime.
"We've arrested 2,500. We've taken 5,000 to administrative hearings," said Owen McShane from the DMV.
The EC has given the go-ahead for new plastic licences to include biometric data on drivers, but no address, and these could come into effect as soon as 2015, by which time the UK Government has said it wants to end the need for the paper counterpart to the present licence.The press release seems to have been put out by Businesscarmanager.co.uk. I didn't find any additional information on the biometric license there, but I did find this, which is fun:
The Corps Marshal and Chief Executive Officer, FRSC, Mr. Osita Chidoka, had said Nigeria was losing over N15bn annually to vendors of fake vehicle licences.15 billion Nigerian Naira ≈ 94 million US Dollars
He explained that the introduction of a new driving licence, with new security features, would make it difficult for fraudsters to continue to forge the document.
Chidoka also said the new scheme would ensure the standardisation of the driving licence, reduce the processing time and guarantee a one-stop-shop for the processing of applications as well as physical capture of applicants’ biometric system.
Last October the Department of Licensing struck back by rolling out facial recognition software that runs biometric scans of each of the 14 million photos in DOL’s database. The software trolls for duplicate photos. ...Programs like this can confer great benefit to society. This program, however, has hit a legal snag that erodes the usefulness of the program. Full story here.
The results of DOL’s photo scans are staggering.
Investigators are now looking into 5,000 cases of people whose photos appear on more than one current license or ID card.
They've already suspended 402 licenses and referred 13 cases for criminal prosecution as they continue to pour through leads generated by the computer.
