Talk about mobile ID...

Your Arizona Driver's License Could Be Stored Someday on Your Smartphone (Phoenix New Times)

Delaware aims to be 1st with digital driver's licenses (USA Today)

So, which will it be? Or, will some other state beat them both?

Saygus V2 smartphone: Android with a fingerprint reader

First impressions: Saygus V2, the phone with 320GB storage (Times of India)

The right edge of the phone sports all hardware buttons(volume rocker, power and camera shutter) and a fingerprint sensor as well as a 60GHz mobile beaming transmitter.

The fingerprint reader appears to be one of the models where the user slides their finger across the sensor. The linked piece has a lot of photos and a review.

The AP explains smartphone fingerprint biometrics

It's not bulletproof security, but it's more secure than existing methods, he says. Despite the risks, Bennett says he sees potential. — "If it results in more people locking their phone," he says, "it improves security."

Eye biometrics with a mobile phone camera

Mobile technology is crying out for better user authentication. Fingerprints would seem like a good match, but there's a hardware chicken-and-egg problem: no fingerprint sensor hardware means no apps and no apps means no manufacturer has decided (long-term) to drive up the cost of their handset to provide a feature few may use.

That means biometric app developers interested in verification using mobile devices have concentrated on modalities that can use the sensors that are already ubiquitous in mobile hardware.

A phone without a microphone isn't a phone anymore so the developers of voice biometrics are in pretty good shape. And though a camera isn't a strictly necessary feature on a mobile device, they all seem to have them. That invites facial recognition, and eye-based biometrics developers into the mobile world.

All three (face, eye, voice) face challenges.

Scan Eyes to unlock spartphones (PSFK)
If I'm reading this article correctly, or more accurately making the correct inference from the picture that accompanies it*, EyeVerify seems to be side-stepping the challenges associated with iris biometrics and camera resolution by switching to an analysis of sclera vasculation — the veins on the white part — for mobile verification.

That's pretty cool.

See also:
Mobile Devices and Biometric Modalities


* According to the EyeVerify site, that was the correct inference.

Unlock Your Phone With Voice Biometrics

Nuance’s Dragon ID lets you unlock your phone by voice (GigaOM)

While typical phone unlocking programs require tapping in a short code or tracing a pattern on screen, Nuance’s technology uses two layers of security: biometrics, which recognizes your unique “voice imprint,” and a password or pass phrase – which in this case is spoken not typed, said Kenneth Harper, Senior Product Manager, Nuance. Nuance has been selling the technology for years to businesses and governments for use in their own biometric security systems – with 20 million voice prints on file – but this is the first time it’s offering up its technology to consumer phones and tablets.

Pretty cool.

Face-Rec iPhone Unlock

FaceVault App Brings Facial Recognition to iOS [VIDEO] (Mashable)

Hardware Reviews: Samsung Galaxy S III

Smooth as silk, impressive facial recognition, camera could be better: We get our hands on the Galaxy S III (The Mirror)

The phone's most significant feature is facial recognition which it's taking to a whole new level.

Rather impressively, the makers boast the S III can tell when you are looking at it and a screensaver won’t be activated when your eyes are fixed on the handset.

When I briefly got my hands on the device earlier tonight the feature seemed to work just as promised but I still would like to see further evidence of this.

Voice recognition, a common feature of many smartphones today, was also part of the package but Samsung are offering you the chance to personalise up to five vocal commands.

Samsung Galaxy S III is official, but not yet for the U.S. (Consumer Reports)

At its Unpacked event tonight in London, Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S III smart phone, a 4G LTE phone with a 1.4 quad-core processor—one of the first ever on a smart phone. It also has a giant 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED (1280x720) display and an impressive array of sensors and software that recognize gestures and biometrics to make phone navigation more intuitive.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Release Roundup: Top Ten Reasons to Upgrade [VIDEO] (International Business Times)

Check out the list of top ten reasons why you should ditch your old smartphone and get the Galaxy S3...

As far as I can tell, the phone uses several technologies related to biometrics such as speech recognition (not the same as voice recognition) and eye detection (an important step in, but not the same as, eye recognition), but doesn't quite cross over into using those technologies for identity management or for controlling access to the device.

It does seem like a really cool phone though, and besides, biometric application developers might just find that the device has the horse power and on-board hardware necessary for adding some ID capability to the device later.

Fujitsu Ultra High Spec Smartphone Prototype Has a Fingerprint Reader

Fujitsu’s Quad-Core Android Phone Offers Powerful Specs (GottaBeMobile.com)

The phone is said to be coming to Asian markets, and Fujitsu has recently revealed that it wants to tackle the European mobile market so this latest addition may find its way to Europe soon. When I spoke with the company’s executives at CES 2012, Fujitsu is also ambitiously eyeing to break into the U.S. mobile market within the next couple of years.

The above article makes a useful companion to this post, reproduced in its entirety below. It also has a video in which the fingerprint reader makes a last-minute cameo.

Unless my eyes deceive me, the Fujitsu phone seems to treat the fingerprint reader more thoughtfully than the Motorola ATRIX did. The Fujitsu has a touch platen located in the center of the top half of the back of the phone whereas the Motorola placed a swipe platen on the top edge of the handset (post and photo here). So the Fujitsu should be easier to use because a more convenient sensor form factor in a more natural location on the device.

Mobile Devices and Biometric Modalities
Smartphones and tablets combine the most powerful attributes of the networked computer and the cell phone, extending the web into every nook and cranny of the globe.

In one awesomely tiny package they facilitate data collection, storage and access to data stored elsewhere.

As a platform for near field communication (NFC) and SMS One-time passwords, mobile devices are also increasingly being used to deliver identity management applications by using a person's known possession of the device as a way of verifying their identity. In access control lingo, mobile devices are being used as tokens.

Using mobile devices is a dream come true for businesses that rely upon tokens: Your customer already owns it; If they lose it, they will be aware of the loss very quickly and they will replace it at their own expense; People are disinclined to lend their phone/credential to someone else; Etc.

Now to the question of securing the device itself and biometric modalities.

Fingerprints are currently the most frequently used biometric for overtly identifying cooperative, habituated individuals. They have a lot of things going for them. Fingerprints are well-understood scientifically, durable, reliable, and fingerprint ID management techniques have been shown to deliver high return on investment in many applications.

These are some of the reasons I lamented Motorola's announcement that it was leaving the fingerprint sensor out of the Atrix 2. The decision makes sense, though. The fingerprint sensor wouldn't be widely used until developers had written software using it, but including the sensor would drive up the cost of each unit for a thinly-used feature. The innovation chicken-and-egg problem is a real one and Motorola seems to have made the judgement that they weren't gaining enough of an advantage in the highly-competitive mobile device market by including it.

But that hasn't meant the end of mobile device biometrics. Just as businesses that issue tokens have been able to take advantage of the fact that their users are already carrying the necessary technology around with them, biometric identity management application developers are doing the same.

Mobile devices already contain the hardware required to deliver two biometric modalities: a camera for facial recognition and a microphone for voice. These modalities present challenges not usually associated with fingerprint biometrics — in the case of facial recognition challenges include lighting and the well-publicized photograph hack; for voice, background noise can be a problem — but they offer the advantage that the hardware is "free" and never going to be yanked out of mobile devices. That's quite an advantage, and it points to why face and voice biometrics are the front-runners for handset biometrics.

Nice and tidy, eh?

So, what to make of today's news that Fujitsu is set to compete more aggressively in the global handset market?

Fujitsu Aims for European Mobile Phone Market (Financial Times)

Fujitsu’s smartphones will certainly feature electronic money technology – enabling owners to use NFC, the mobile payment system – and biometric recognition to make their use as mobile wallets more secure.

Fujitsu, more than any other handset manufacturer, is deeply involved in biometric sensor hardware (finger, palm) that doesn't currently reside on stock mobile platforms. So stay tuned.

Analysis predicts growth of biometric security products and services on mobile devices

Market will grow to over $161 million in revenue by 2015. (Security Park)

A lot of the information provided at the link tracks thoughts expressed in Monday's post, Mobile Devices and Biometric Modalities.

If you missed it, please consider giving it a read. There's a synergy in reading the two pieces together.

Biometrics in Their Proper Security Context

Here's a really good article that, on its surface, is about the facial recognition capabilities included in the Android 4.0 mobile operation system. It also communicates a couple of important security concepts: deterrence and layers.

Facial Recognition and The Club (IT Business Edge via @m2sys)

Deterrence:
I don't have to be faster than the bear, I just have to be faster than you.
OR
Don't be the lowest-hanging fruit.

In the bigger picture, it's useful to think of The Club. The device, which clamps onto opposite sides of an automobile's steering wheel to prevent its turning, isn’t enough to prevent a theft. It is enough, however, to require at least a moderate level of expertise (and, in this example, tools) to get it off. There simply are so many totally unprotected targets – cars in one case, mobile devices in the other – that it doesn’t take too much to make the thief move on to lower-hanging fruit. The Club and facial recognition are deterrents, not foolproof safeguards.

Layers:
Just because my house has locks on the doors and windows, doesn't mean I'm in favor of dissolving the police department.

The danger is that the technology will be seen as all the device owner needs to do to be safe. That isn’t the case. Serdar Yegulalp at Byte has it about right in his view that biometrics is best seen as one tool in the security tool chest:

There's ways to fix the facial unlock function to make it more useful. Schneier mentions in his piece how fingerprint readers could be programmed to prevent cheating by detecting a pulse or a pore pattern. Facial unlock, likewise, could be reprogrammed to only work if the person winks or smiles - two things a photo definitely can't do.

There are those who object to biometric identity management measures on aesthetic grounds. That's fine. There's no accounting for taste. The argument that because biometric security applications are imperfect as stand-alone solutions they are useless is, however, without merit.

Poland: Banks, Biometrics, Smartphones & Mobile Commerce

Poland's banking market adjusting to innovative technologies (Warsaw Business Journal)

Experts at the 2nd annual Warsaw International Banking Summit, held in late October, generally agreed that Poland is moving in the right direction, and is one of the leaders in biometrics and mobile payments in Europe. However, it remains unclear which type of companies can take the lead, whether it will be banks, tech giants, payment firms or mobile operators.

Moreover, it is still not completely clear which applications and technologies customers will take to.

Lots of good stuff at the link.

Motorola Atrix 2 Has No Fingerprint Reader

Nooooooo! (itBusiness.ca)

The company removed the biometric fingerprint scanner, as well; when I asked a Motorola representative about this at CTIA, the rep said that it wasn't a widely used feature.

Two days after gushing about the possibilities offered by a fingerprint reader on an Android smartphone, we learn that Motorola has removed the fingerprint reader from the Atrix 2. Needless to say, I'm disappointed.

The sensor couldn't have been a widely used feature until developers had time to write software using it, which they certainly would have done if only a manufacturer such as Motorola had shown a commitment to making the hardware available. Any developer that had written software for it just had the chair pulled out from under them, and those who were looking forward to the opportunity can now focus their attention elsewhere.

Mobile hardware is a tricky business. There is a tension between the market signals from the "make 'em cheaper" vs the "make 'em more secure" crowd. It's unfortunate for the "make 'em more secure" crowd that they lost an opportunity to vote with their wallets.