Argentinians concerned about Government Surveillance Overreach

In Argentina the collection of biometric data is drawing criticism (Miami Herald)

Argentina’s police were recently accused of infiltrating and spying on demonstrations against the American company Kraft to collect personal information of protesters through a program called “Project X.” Security Minister Nilda Garré has denied the charges but called for an investigation, even as the chief of the national police agency, Héctor Schenone, confirmed the existence of the program in court documents.

Experts say a biometric database would make the identification of protestors much easier.

“Privacy is particularly crucial for our country since throughout our long history of social and political movements, calls for action have often taken to the streets,” says Beatriz Busaniche of Vía Libre, a local foundation that promotes freedom on the Internet. She stressed the importance of anonymity for demonstrators, “especially when they are at odds with the government.’’

Argentina and other Latin American countries are updating their decades-old national ID systems and moving to biometrics without a public debate on the privacy and data-protection implications of these proposals, according to Katitza Rodriguez, the international rights director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that defends digital rights.

Biometric systems are never deployed in a vacuum. Argentina's political and economic history over the last thirty years has been tumultuous, to say the least.

Everyone is entitled to an open deliberative process leading to the highest possible degree of consensus and transparency before the implementation of such systems, and accountability afterwards.

Argentinians are entitled to such a process before deciding whether or not the potential rewards outweigh the real risks that such a surveillance system will be compromised or abused.

Identity management is about people.

Macedonia: All Non-Biometric ID's Expire Monday

Image Source: CIA World Factbook

Macedonia: Only biometric identity cards to be valid as of Monday (Focus Information Agency)

Tanzania Using Biometrics to Cope with Horn of Africa Chaos

It seems like West Africa is more active in the biometrics world. Here's some biometrics news from East Africa.

Tanzania Inaugurates Japan-Funded Immigration Facilities (Modern Ghana)

A 2009 IOM study "In Pursuit of the Southern Dream" suggested that some 17,000-20,000 mainly young men from Somalia and Ethiopia are smuggled through Tanzania en route to South Africa every year.
...
In each location the Japanese-funded project has allowed IOM, in close collaboration with Tanzanian police and immigration counterparts, to construct and extend premises where the migrants can be housed and screened.

It has also provided IT equipment to allow Tanzanian immigration officers to capture biographic and biometric data in order to create a record of all migrants passing through land border posts. The project has also donated 11 cars and three boats.

UK Border Scandal Update: Independent Inspector's Report Published

The UK's border control scandal of last fall is back in the news as John Vine, an independent inspector of the Border Agency, has released his findings (84-page .pdf available at icinspector.independent.gov.uk) An investigation into border security checks.

One of our slogans at SecurLinx is "Identity management is about people," and the shortcomings in the UK border apparatus seem (and always have seemed) to have been failings of management and communication rather than failures of technology and its proper use. That's why we didn't spend much time on the subject last fall (only one post) and why we won't spend much time on it today.

A small part of the story does seem to deal with biometrics, though.

Terror fear as border checks fail (Sydney Morning Herald)

The report also found that biometric chip checks were routinely suspended before the pilot began. Between January and June last year, chip reading was suspended 14,812 times, but the Border Agency was "unable to explain definitively why these suspensions occurred".

Needless to say, biometrics only work if you use them.


In addition to the above referenced story, here is a selection of other coverage:

The Migrant Rights Network thinks this is all being blown way out of proportion.

The Daily Mail (here & here) is less sanguine.

The Guardian does a good job covering the bureaucratic finger-pointing angle.

Scotland: The Herald's Kate Devlin covers it like she's talking to Joe Friday.

Second Order Benefits of India's UID Project

This blog has compared India's UID program and census to the American space program of the sixties (here, here & here). The analogy holds because, like the space program, India's ID programs stand to deliver benefits far beyond the scope envisioned by their originators.

The space program eventually led to the development of satellite telecommunications, GPS and many other benefits. Moreover, the benefits of these technologies are not confined to the United States.

India'a population-level biometrics programs stand to confer a huge benefit to countries all over the world, too.

There's a very important way in which the analogy doesn't hold, though.

With the space program there is a sense that if the United States didn't do it, nobody would or could.

With the Indian ID projects there is a sense that if India can do it, anybody can...

"[...N]ot because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone..."

- John F. Kennedy

India faces challenges that make UID harder to accomplish there than anywhere else I can think of. If India can do it, other countries will find following in India's footsteps a much less formidable challenge than following in Neil Armstrong's.

India gives globe tips on UID (Hindustan Times)

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is assisting the government of Papua New Guinea, a small island nation in the Pacific Ocean close to Australia, in starting a national identity scheme. Two UIDAI officials — deputy director general BB Nanawati and additional director general Anup Kumar — spent a week there this January to guide the country's government in providing biometric identity to its residents.

Ireland: New era for Visas

Biometric visas (e-Visa project) (Business & Leadership)

Chief executive of the Irish Exporters Association (IEA) John Whelan has welcomed the vision for a new era for visa systems for Ireland, which was outlined at the second meeting of the Export Trade Council held last week.

...
The basis of the long-term waiver is likely to be based on sharing biometric checks through fingerprint recognition technology with the UK authorities.

Biometrics are increasingly being used as a feature of visa application and border checking by many advanced economies.

However, the Dept of Justice and Equality advised the Export Trade Council that the cost of putting the biometric technology in the worldwide network of Irish embassies would cost in the order of €6.5m.

Much more at the link.

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.

Ghana Biometric Voter Registration: 4 Phases in 40 Days

E.C. announces dates for biometric registration (Ghana Web)

The 40-day registration exercise will be held at the polling station levels with four polling stations coming together to form a cluster for the registration.

As part of the registration process, prospective voters will be required to provide their exact date of birth, their current residential address as well as their hometown address.

Applicants will also be be required to show evidence of eligibility to register by providing either a birth certificate, passport, baptismal card, a driver’s license or a national health insurance card, the national I.D card or the existing voter ID card.

The prints from all ten fingers of applicants as well as their images will be captured digitally as part of the registration exercise. In the event of an applicant having lost some fingers, the fingerprints of the available fingers will be captured. Special arrangements will also be made for the registration of persons without fingers.

India: Six Week Hiatus for UID Enrollments

It's a “six-week break” for Aadhaar enrolments (The Hindu)

Weeks after the Union Cabinet decided that the task of collecting biometric and demographic data of residents would be shared by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the National Population Register, Aadhar enrolments across the country have been suspended as the process is reviewed.

The enrolment process is on a “six-week break”, senior officials in the UIDAI told The Hindu , and during this period “modalities” on how to go forward with the second phase of this scheme will be finalised. Enrolments are slated to recommence by mid-April, after a “thorough review” of the existing process is conducted, the official said.

Nigeria: Biometrics Generate $965 Million in Pension Savings

FG Cuts Spending (This Day Live)

She also disclosed that the Pension Task Force made a recovery of about N151 billion following the use of the biometric verification system in plugging leakages occasioned by the menace of ghost workers in the public sector.

Today: 151,000,000,000.00 NGN = 955,998,752.25 USD. That's some heavy ROI.

Two UK Airports Turn Off Iris Scanners

This seems to be more a question of modality going forward than a rejection of biometrics. Birmingham and Manchester Scrap Iris for Frequent Traveler (BBC)

They will continue working at London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports until after the 2012 Olympics.

A UK Border Agency spokeswoman said the government was reviewing the use of the scanners in the light of new technology.

The Iris Recognition Immigration System (IRIS) was first introduced into Heathrow in 2005 and rolled out at Birmingham, Gatwick and Manchester in the following year.

Canada's Tories Move to Address Bogus Refugees

"Canada's asylum system is broken" (Vancouver Sun)

On average, Kenney said it takes four and a half years from the initial claim to remove a failed refugee claimant for the country.

The legislation also would grant legal authority to collect biometric data from people entering Canada on a visitor visa, work permit or study visa.

"We have seen many cases of people, criminals — foreign criminals — arrested, convicted, and deported who came back to Canada using fake papers," Kenney said.

He said the use of biometrics would prevent failed refugee claimants from trying to return to the country.

Canada is among the world's most welcoming countries to refugees. If it to remain that way, Canadians need to have a high level of confidence that the system works well.

Nandan Nilekani on UID

Nandan Nilekani talks development, privacy, utility and the cloud in this short, but excellent UID interview at Business Today.

Biometrics Assist US Border Patrol Apprehension of Convicted Kidnapper

Previously removed from the U.S. in May and June, 2011 (Deming Headlight)

Using the Integrated Automated Identification System (IAFIS), and other databases, a female subject from the group was identified as Blanca Yesenia Garcia-Recinos, a 24-year-old Guatemalan national.

The subject's biometric information revealed prior arrests which led to felony convictions, including kidnapping, burglary and aggravated assault in 2009.

Garcia-Recinos was previously removed from the U.S. in May and June, 2011.

South Africa: Biometrics to Curb Social Security Fraud

The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) awards a R10-billion contract (Mail & Guardian Online)

Social development director general Vusi Madonsela told the Mail & Guardian that Sassa does not own a database and it doesn't have a biometric database of beneficiaries and would like to create that record. "It's also very important for the purpose of fighting fraud. And in the process of creating that record of database, we will pick up the wrong things in the system," said Madonsela.

He added that the re-registration of beneficiaries will begin in the next financial year.

Ten billion Rand = US $1.3 billion.

Education and Large-Scale Biometric Deployments: Ghana Vote

EU commits €7m to fund Ghana’s 2012 election activities (Ghana Web)

The European Union (EU) is supporting three organizations in the country with an amount of seven million Euros to train their staff and educate the public on the Biometric Voter Registration exercise.

The beneficiary organizations are the Electoral Commission (EC), National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) and the National Media Commission (NMC).

Biometric scanners don't cause erectile dysfunction - EC (Ghana Web)

The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and the Electoral Commission (EC) have debunked rumours that scanners for the biometric voters registration can cause cancer or erectile dysfunction.

According to the two bodies, the scanners, which will be used for biometric registration, would be similar to the ones used at the various international airports, such as the Kotoka International Airport, the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and the Schipol Airport in Amsterdam.

Every large scale biometric deployment will have an education component and the educational challenges differ depending upon many factors.

Knowing how different groups are likely to receive a biometric system can make a real difference in the odds of its success.

It's not about the tech., ID management is about people.

The Cloud & Biometric ID Management

Cloud-Based Application Development for Biometrics Data (M2SYS Blog)

More and more international governments and security-intensive companies are using biometric-enabled identity cards for their employees and professionals. As this technology becomes more widespread, the need to make this technology more mobile, and more accessible is becoming clear. Experts all over the globe are pushing for cloud-based biometrics for greater efficiency and mobility.

More at the link.

What is a Face Scan, Anyway?

More than 10,000 Olympic athletes and their coaches are having fingerprints and face-scans taken by UK officials around the world in the biggest operation of its type to prevent the London Games being targeted by illegal immigrants or terrorists. (The Independent - emphasis mine)

Did I miss a revision to the J-School style manual stipulating that photographs are henceforth to be called face scans?

Is this a British usage thing like calling flashlights torches, trucks lorries, and elevators lifts?

Let me try:

"Are those face-scans of your children? They're adorable!"
"I lost a ton of weight, so I put a new face-scan on my LinkedIn profile."
"I hate my drivers license face-scan."

How am I doing? What? Not good?

My friend from Purley assures me "that's not the way it's done back home," pointing out that this guy didn't say...

"Your wife interested in er... face-scanning, eh?"

My friend is correct!

No, I think "face-scans" is a term meant to communicate an author's disapproval of facial recognition technology without directly acknowledging bias. Wink, wink; nudge, nudge.



Public service: Here's the whole 'Candid Photography' clip at YouTube

See also:
The Politics of Biometrics: A Shibboleth, from the SecurLinx blog's early days.

h/t @m2sys

Using Electrical Properties of Heartbeat as a Biometric Modality?

Human heartbeats never quite repeat themselves, and each person's heartbeat is unique (Daily Mail - UK)

Because "pulse rate" is nowhere near synonymous with "electrocardiogram," the headline in the article linked above is wrong and a bit misleading. The concept described in the article, however, is very interesting.

Pulse rate is a number, usually expressed as beats per minute (bpm). The average resting heart rate for an adult is 60-90 bpm. An individual's pulse rate varies not just with levels of activity or excitement; it also varies depending upon whether the person is inhaling or exhaling at the time. Trying to account for individuality among the entire adult population with a simple biostatistic that varies within an individual every few seconds, but among the whole population by only 30 bpm is absurd. Pulse rate is wholly unsuited to biometric identification.

But what about ECG?

The electrocardiogram (loose translation: electric heart writing, or ECG) is a far more detailed representation of what the heart is up to. It looks like this:

Photo: Wikipedia

This graph shows the electrical activity associated with two full heart beats, and it may be possible that the formula describing an individual ECG will turn out to be unique enough and stable enough over time to use as a biometric identifier.

The other good news is that there are probably millions of recorded individual ECG readings for biometric algorithm designers to work with. Even people without fingers have heartbeats. Another awesome upshot of an ECG biometric would be the promise that that, one day, your phone or laptop might be able to tell if you're having a heart attack. Unfortunately, the good news pretty much ends there.

The bad news:
Healthy hearts all look very similar on an ECG, which is part of what makes the ECG a useful diagnostic tool.

Where on the body ECG sensors are placed causes changes in the observed wave, mostly on the Y-axis.

The wave gets compressed or stretched horizontally (X-axis) based upon heart rate.

So, to summarize these first three points, the ECG, like heart rate, may vary by too much within an individual but not enough over the healthy population to make it a useful identifier.

The biometric is actually a biostatistic, which is problematic (as linked above).

An ECG is medical information, which has accompanying regulatory and privacy issues.

It's going to be difficult for this type of modality to displace other hand-based biometrics which have a huge head start in terms of price, proof of reliability, education and acceptance.

In short, this is one of those subjects that is intensely interesting from a Ph.D.'s point of view (invention) but not so much from an engineering or business perspective (innovation). ECG as a biometric will face significant — I dare say insurmountable — challenges in finding its way into wide use as a commercial ID management application any time soon.

UK Car Finance Group’s Avoids £3.2M in Identity Fraud

The Funding Corporation Limited (TFC) says that almost 500 cases of suspected fraud were identified in 2011 (Press Release)

The result was achieved by vigilant staff across the group, trained by a dedicated anti-fraud unit in the company, aided by document checking technology from Au10Tix in all of its ACF Car Finance Limited used car dealerships.

Forged passports and driving licences presented by customers to verify their ID are among the illegally-held documents picked up by the crime-fighting scanners.

The software analyses components of documents such as biometric data, visual data, infrared, ultraviolet and holograms to provide its full authentication check.

ACF Car Finance is the first UK motor retailer to use this technology, says Richard Cox, Head of Motor Operations at TFC, parent company to ACF Car Finance.

However, he comments, in addition to significantly reducing the company’s exposure to the risk of fraud, the scanners also provide both commercial and customer benefits:

"By removing the risk of human error from document checking we are also freeing up showroom staff to spend more time with customers" said Richard.

"Also, consumers do not have to wait around as long while their documents are manually authenticated - a procedure which some people find irritating and slightly offensive.

"In just a few seconds, we can now ascertain if an item of identity is genuine - and it is a far more robust and customer-friendly way of managing fraud risk than manual checking" said Richard.

“What’s more, if an innocent customer is involved, for example if their details are used fraudulently, they are duly notified and offered advice on how to protect themselves from ID Fraud in the future.”

Better ID management is good for companies and their customers.