Amazon files mobile face recognition patent for payments

Amazon will soon accept mobile payments using selfies instead of passwords (Silicon Republic)

Amazon has filed a patent application for technology that will allow users to authenticate a payment using a photo or video in a seamless way that doesn’t necessarily require passwords.

“The user is identified using image information which is processed utilising facial recognition. The device verifies that the image information corresponds to a living human using one or more human-verification processes,” the patent reads.

Illinois: Google faces face-rec lawsuit

Google Gets Sued Over Face Recognition, Joining Facebook And Shutterfly In Battle Over Biometric Privacy In Illinois (IBTimes)

In the latest scuffle over biometric data collection in Illinois, Google Inc. this week was hit with a lawsuit over its face-recognition technology, making Google the latest tech giant to be accused of violating an unusual state privacy law that restricts the collection and storage of so-called faceprints. Illinois and Texas are the only two states that regulate how private companies may use biometric data, and Illinois is the only state that authorizes statutory damages for violations.

Face recognition in retail

Walmart’s Use of Sci-fi Tech To Spot Shoplifters Raises Privacy Questions (Fortune)

The only company that acknowledged using the software was Walmart. According to a spokesperson, the retailer tested facial recognition software in stores across several states for several months, but then discontinued the practice earlier this year.

“We were looking for a concrete business rationale … It didn’t have the ROI,” or return on investment, the spokesperson says.

Retailers and biometrics companies have been working together for years trying to figure out how to apply face recognition to the problem of shoplifting. As expected in a retail business, it all comes down to Return on Investment (ROI).

First, here's what modern shoplifting looks like. It isn't just teenagers pocketing lip-sticks and candy bars.

Police bust 'amazing' $15,000-a-day shoplifting ring (USA Today)

HAZEL PARK, Mich. — Police say a 7,600-square-foot warehouse served as the business hub for a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar theft ring that stole items from southeastern Michigan retailers and resold them on the Internet.

Veteran investigators said the shoplifting ring, which swiped as much as $15,000 a day in over-the-counter drugs and other goods from area stores, is the largest they have ever seen.

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard called the illegal business "amazing in size and scope" and one that likely operated for years before drug investigators spotted it last month.

The ring operators stored stolen items in the warehouse and sold them on the Internet through eBay, Amazon.com and other sites, investigators said.

Read the whole thing. Criminal organizations like these cause huge losses to retailers, higher prices to consumers, and increased production of dangerous street drugs. More and more, shoplifting is an organized crime problem, and everyone who isn't in on the scam pays the price in one way or another.

Privacy issues associated with facial recognition in businesses open to the public get a lot of well-deserved attention. Clearly, facial recognition technology could be deployed in businesses open to the public in ways that are injurious to a reasonable person's expectation of privacy. Brainstorming those ways, however, takes us pretty far away from the ROI calculation that is motivating retail outlets to seek out technologies that can help them reduce losses due to theft.

The privacy focus for facial recognition in retail spaces should be on what data is collected and what happens to it. In this case that means the photos and personal information that goes along with them. The easy part is that retail establishments have been collecting information on suspected shoplifters for a long time now and they already have policies about what they collect, when they collect it, and how long they retain it. The hard part is that new facial recognition technology makes sharing the information easier, securing it more difficult (and important!), and it requires new training for loss prevention staff about what, exactly, the technology is telling them.

That brings us back to the ROI. Obviously, using facial recognition to prevent a $15,000 organized crime heist helps the ROI calculation. Using facial recognition to interrupt a shopper based upon a "false positive" ID hurts the ROI calculation. So there's at least a little bit of good news here for privacy: The ROI calculation that is so important to the business's decision whether or not to use a facial recognition system does have a built-in way to account for at least some privacy concerns.

Positive review for Microsoft facial authentication on new hardware

Windows Hello facial logins on the new Surfaces are rather impressive (RAs Technica)

With Hello enabled, logging in to the machine is as simple as sitting down in front of it. The lock screen shows the Windows Hello "eye" looking around, and the detection is near-instantaneous. It takes longer for Windows to dismiss the lock screen and show the desktop than it does for it to recognize you in the first place. In fact, it's so quick that a kind of delay had to be built in. If there were no delay, locking your PC with Windows+L (or the Start menu option) would be nigh impossible.

Australia funds national face recognition capability

Govt funds $18.5m Aussie facial recognition database (iTnews)

It will allow law enforcement agencies to share citizens' facial images to identify unknown individuals and verify identities.

The 'national facial biometric matching capability' will match a facial photograph to images on passports, visas and driver’s licences, and will initially offer functionality to match the identities of known individuals. It will later be able to match unknown individuals, the AGD said last month.

It will be targeted towards identity theft, fraudulent identity documents and "other serious criminal activity", AGD said.

Windows Hello face recognition not fooled by Australian twins

Microsoft's facial recognition software does something amazing when it encounters twins (Business Insider)

Each set of twins set up an account for one and then the other attempted to log-in — and the software held. According to The Australian, there was not one instance of Windows Hello allowing the wrong twin access to the computer.

The headline to the contrary, notwithstanding, Microsoft's facial recognition software pretty much does nothing when it encounters a legitimate user's identical twin.

MasterCard announces two biometrics pilots

MasterCard puts faces and fingers under microscope (Mobile World Live)

MasterCard and First Tech Federal Credit Union, a US financial institution, will pilot the authentication of payments using facial and fingerprint recognition, in what they claim is a first for the country.

Separately, MasterCard is running another biometrics trial with International Card Services (ICS), the leading credit card provider in the Netherlands.

Kudos to Morpho

MorphoTrak Leads With Face Comparison Training (Financial Content)

MorphoTrak, a U.S. subsidiary of Morpho (Safran), announced today that it will offer vendor-independent training* in face comparison, filling an acknowledged gap in the field of computer-aided face recognition and facial identification. Automated face recognition systems are common in both law enforcement and civil applications, yet facial matching software can only present the reviewer with potential matches. It is up to the human reviewer to decide whether two facial images belong to the same individual.


*“Vendor-independent training” means that the techniques the course will teach work for all face examiners, no matter what face recognition software they are using.

Kudos to Morpho. Facial recognition is a powerful tool for well-trained users. This challenge is well known among those who have worked to place facial recognition capabilities into the hands of law enforcement and security professionals.

Computers don't look at the world the way we do. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on what you're trying to accomplish. For facial recognition in a law enforcement context, it's a good thing to have a radically different point of view applied to a challenge.

First, faces are probably the most meaningful objects in human existence. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that for millennia human survival has depended upon our abilities at one type of facial recognition: recognizing people you know. Sorting through hundreds of thousands of pictures of people we don't know in order to match the two that are of the same person, however is not something we're inherently good at.

Computers can do that in less than a second, then give the two pictures to a human which is very good at making the single comparison — if that person understands their role in the machine-human partnership well.

Training is the key.

Jamaica: Face rec audit for passport issuance

Jamaica uses biometrics to secure passport issuance system (Security Document World)

The Jamaican Government has announced it will attempt to prevent passport application fraud by adding a biometric facial recognition system to its current passport issuance and control system (JPICS).

Every passport issuer should be doing this.

Ireland: Biometrics helping reduce welfare fraud

Welfare fraudster caught using facial recognition software (Irish Times)

A father of three who committed €25,000 worth of social welfare fraud until he was caught using facial recognition software has been jailed for 18 months.

FBI face rec leads to fugitive pedophile

FBI using facial recognition despite privacy concerns (Valley News - Fargo, ND)

For 19 years, Lynn Cozart eluded authorities after being convicted of sexually assaulting his three children.

He failed to show up for his sentencing hearing and seemed to drop off the map. So in a desperate bid to track down the Pennsylvania native, an FBI agent submitted Cozart's mug shot to the agency's newly created Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which among other things uses facial recognition software to identify suspects.

The story continues at the link. With input from privacy advocates and law enforcement officials.

Blink once for "yes"

MasterCard is testing a new way for you to pay with your face (Engadget)

MasterCard announced on Thursday that it's looking to add a layer of biometric security to its credit cards and all user will need to do is simply take a selfie. The system will create a digitized map of your face, convert that map into a hash and compare it to the hash stored on Mastercard's servers.

Here's a quick demo:

Israel continues toward biometric ID

Knesset Extends Biometric ID Trial Program (Arutz Sheva)

The law was passed in part to prevent identity theft and the loss, theft and destruction of the blue ID cards issued by the Interior Ministry, which had spiraled out of control in the decade prior to 2007. It was later revealed that more than half of those requesting new documents had a criminal background.

Useful perspective on face recognition technology

Is facial recognition tech really a threat to privacy? (BBC)

Facebook has decided not to offer its photo-sharing app Moments in Europe because of regulator concerns over its facial recognition technology.

And earlier this week, talks between US tech firms and privacy campaigners broke down over fears about how the industry is planning to use the tech.

So why is there so much concern over facial recognition tech, and is it justified? We unpick some of the issues.

US: Face recognition ID check trial concluded at Dulles Airport

First phase of facial recognition trial at Virginia airport ends (Planet Biometrics)

The system captures live facial images of travelers entering the U.S., and compares those images against those stored electronically in travelers' passports.

The most interesting thing is that this hasn't been standard operating procedure for years already, as it's hard to conceive of a simpler facial recognition application. The hardest part would seem to be retrieving the image from the chip embedded in most modern passports.

US: Face recognition code of conduct confab loses privacy advocates

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has convened a privacy multistakeholder process regarding the commercial use of facial recognition technology. On December 3, 2013, the NTIA announced that the goal of the second multistakeholder process is to develop a voluntary, enforceable code of conduct that specifies how the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights applies to facial recognition technology in the commercial context.

Privacy Advocates Walk Out in Protest Over U.S. Facial-Recognition Code of Conduct (The Intercept)

“At a base minimum, people should be able to walk down a public street without fear that companies they’ve never heard of are tracking their every movement — and identifying them by name – using facial recognition technology,” the privacy advocates wrote in a joint statement.

The quoted article is full of links to NTIA online resources.

An "open letter" of resignation on the part of the named privacy advocates lists their concerns here.
Concluding paragraph:

We hope that our withdrawal signals the need to reevaluate the effectiveness of multistakeholder processes in developing effective rules of the road that protect consumer privacy – and that companies will support and implement.

Ultimately, of course, these are political questions rather than technological ones, but the focus on one type of technology (facial recognition) is a little difficult to understand. If it's wrong for a private corporation to track an unsuspecting individual's every movement, identifying them by name, why single out facial recognition (the means) rather than the tracking (the end)?

The privacy advocates, however, have a point in their favor. The effectiveness of confabs of privacy advocates, sub-cabinet-level administrators, and corporate executives in defining a society's scope for privacy in public should be questioned.

Also mentioned in the article is the fact that the states of Texas and Illinois have passed laws limiting the use of facial recognition technology to identify individuals in public without their affirmative consent.

UK: Leicestershire police trial face recognition at music festival

Download Festival: Facial recognition technology used at event could be coming to festivals nationwide (The Independent)

Around 90,000 people attending the five-day rock event in Derby will have their faces scanned by “strategically placed” cameras, which are then compared with a database of custody images across Europe.

The force has trialled the system since April 2014 in “controlled environments”, but this is the first time the portable NeoFace surveillance technology, made by NEC Corporation, is being used outdoors in the UK on this scale.

Leicestershire police said it hoped the system would enable them to find organised criminals who prey on festivalgoers who are often victims of theft.

This sounds a lot like the 'Snooper Bowl' deployment we had a role in back in 2001.

Facial recognition surveillance in an uncontrolled environment with non-participating individuals still presents significant technical challenges. Among them are lighting, pose angle, and perhaps most significantly, training users on how to evaluate the information the facial recognition system generates.

See also: Leicestershire Police defend facial recognition scans (BBC)

Canada announces biometric requirement for visa holders

Biometric data collection evolves and expands in Canada (CBC)

Citizenship and Immigration Canada told CBC News that digital photos and fingerprints are "the only biometrics data applicants will have to provide" under the government's plan for expanded collection of data. Visitors will have to pay $85 to cover the cost of data collection.

Travelers who don't need a visa to travel to Canada are, apparently, unaffected.

Biometric facial matching for outbound Aussie passengers accelerated (Government News)

Australia’s Immigration and Border Protection authorities have revealed an accelerated plan for the rollout of new automated biometric facial recognition gates at Australian airports for outbound Australian passport holders and some travellers departing the country as part of $630 million counter-terrorism sweep.

China: Regulators reluctant to allow online bank account creation

Chinese Regulators Put Brakes on Facial-Recognition for Payment (PYMNTS.com)

Currently, in China, a customer must physically appear at a bank to have his or her identity verified by an employee before he or she can open an account. There is a push in the industry, the report points out, for facial-recognition software to replace the need for a customer’s physical presence to conduct banking business.

China seems to be drawing a regulatory distinction between what ID requirements should be in place in order to open a bank account versus what ID requirements banks can use for authenticating transactions.