Biometrics for newborns in hospital maternity units?

Maha govt asks hospitals to ensure biometric ID of infants (IBN Live)

In order to prevent thefts of babies from hospitals, the Maharashtra government has asked state-run medical centres to ensure biometric identification of infants within two hours of birth.

As far as I know, it's easier to apply biometric identity management techniques to the adults who have a right remove a baby from a hospital than it is to biometrically account for the identity of each infant. Face recognition doesn't work very well on infants and newborns aren't going to be able to help with the more participatory biometric modalities like iris and finger even if the algorithms are applicable to infant morphology (and I'm not sure that they are).

Footprints have been collected from newborns for a long time, but even though human experts can match properly executed paper and ink footprints, I'm not aware of any matching algorithms for the foot to automate that process.

So that leaves biometrics for the adults that are allowed in the maternity ward including parents/soon-to-be parents and a special category for individuals that are allowed to remove a newborn from hospital property: new parents exclusively.

Granted, that won't prevent baby mix-ups, but it can go a long way to making baby theft much more difficult.

In a more passive approach, SecurLinx has experience providing facial recognition capabilities to monitor a watch list of individuals restrained from approaching a maternity wing.

If anyone out there has any information on biometric algorithms intended for use on newborns, please send it along.

South Africa Announces Biometric Safeguards for Welfare Programs

Tough new steps to fight grant fraud (Independent Online)

Authorities will record the voices of and re-fingerprint up to 5 million people, as well as taking the footprints of children under six in a bid to clamp down on rampant fraud and abuse of welfare payments in KwaZulu-Natal, the province with the worst record for such fraud.

SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) spokesman Cuba Mahaye yesterday said the new verification process, to be implemented countrywide, would also be applied to those who received disability and pension grants.

The full article has a more detailed explanation of the type and scope of fraud involved. The less people see welfare programs as a means to defraud the public, the more they will support them.

Gene that causes people to be born without fingerprints discovered

Identity management word of the day:

Adermatoglyphia (or Immigration Delay Disease) - a genetic condition responsible for a lack of any grooves or patterns on the hands and feet.

Fingered out: Gene causes birth without fingerprints (Daily Mail - UK)

Like DNA, fingerprints are unique to each person or set of identical twins and that makes them a valuable identification tool for everything from crime detection to international travel.

They are used for identification because they are fully formed 24 weeks after fertilisation and do not change throughout our lives.

Only four documented families are known to suffer from the disease worldwide.

It isn’t only fingertips that have patterned skin, says professor Sprecher. Palms, toes and the soles of the feet also feature these ridges, called dermatoglphs.

Fingerprints don't expire

Electronic chip in ID card for Emiratis lasts five years (Zawya.com)

Abu Dhabi: The Emirates Identity Authority (EIDA) has fixed a five-year validity period for Emirati national ID cards because of the five-year life span of the electronic chip in the card, the authority explained yesterday in a statement.

The lifespan of the electronic chip in the national ID card is five years, Eida said.

And there may be biological changes in an individual with ageing which affects biometrics like fingerprinting. “Such changes have to be recorded in the system,” Eida said.

There are all sorts of good reasons to have ID cards expire but, barring severe bodily trauma such as permanent scarring or actually losing digits, changes to fingerprints aren't one of them.

Baby footprints are taken at birth and, given adequate skill and care in recording them, they are reliable over extremely long periods of time. FBI print experts have identified the adult victims of such disasters as fires and airplane crashes by using the footprints of the individuals taken in infancy.

Anybody know why they use baby footprints instead of hand prints?