Patrick Grother, NIST iris project leader among 15 innovative US government employees

Patrick Grother is a pioneer in making iris scans--not long ago, the stuff of science fiction--a viable biometric usable on smart card credentials today (FierceGovernmentIT)

This is what a legacy system looks like

Moral turpitude, severe violations of the religious freedom of others, intent to become a prostitute, not if you want a USA visa, you don't.

Why are US visa questions so weird? (Financial Times - Registration Required to read the linked article)

The reason US visa forms seem such an odd accretion of questions is that is what they are. They have been added to over the decades to confront whatever danger the US was dealing with at the time.
...
Are the visa forms an effective way of keeping undesirables out of the US? “If we’re interested in keeping people who mean to do us harm out, it’s not very effective,” Mr Chishti says. Biometric screening, databases and finger printing are far more useful, he says.

Mobile device manufacturers begin taking security more seriously

A little over two years ago, when Motorola yanked the fingerprint sensor from its Atrix line, we noted that there is a tension between the market signals from the "make 'em cheaper" vs the "make 'em more secure" crowd.

It appears that the rise of mobile commerce since then is forcing manufacturers to give more weight to security now than they did then.

Security continues to be a major issue for mobile commerce (Mobile Commerce Press)

Mobile identity is becoming more important to businesses, especially as more consumers around the world begin to rely on smartphones, tablets, and other devices in their daily lives. Market research firm ResearchMOZ has released a new report concerning the growing importance of mobile identity and how businesses are beginning to invest more heavily in biometrics and other such technologies. The report cites the growth of mobile interactions and mobile commerce as the influence behind higher investments in mobile identity.

...and there's this.

ARM is developing a 128-bit mobile chip for use in Samsung hardware (tech2)

If 64-bits just aren't enough for you, the ARM official has also revealed that it is aiming for 128-bit mobile chips that will be developed over the next couple of years. As ridiculous as it may sound, demand for the chip will supposedly be driven by the drastic performance upgrades needed for biometric sensors and face recognition.

128 seems a bit big. Facial recognition recognition systems in government applications with very large databases work well on 32- and 64-bit systems. Those who may disagree will likely base their disagreement on factors other than number of bits of data the chip can handle at one time.

Nevertheless, it's good to see hardware manufacturers providing more options to security-conscious mobile device user.

Report: Biometrics market to more than triple in size over next 6 years

Global biometrics market $5.2 billion in 2013, is expected to reach $16.7 billion by 2019 (Market Research Reports)

A rise in government projects has been seen as terrorists become an increasing threat. This has been accompanied by increasing data security concerns. There is a need for advanced security devices. Security systems implementations drive the market for biometric systems. Biometric data protection is being used to replace photographs, passwords and PIN codes.

So this is what Microsoft has been up to...

SILICON REPUBLIC:  Xbox One dashboard video highlights biometric abilities of new console (with video)  "The Kinect camera comes with biometric capabilities that recognise the voice of each individual in the household, as well as their body shape because it reads their skeletal frame."

The linked article comes at the technology on display from an Xbox One angle but I think it's bigger than that. Is Microsoft just highlighting it's vision for the Windows 8 world? Is it signalling that the future of Microsoft is going to be more bound up with hardware like the Xbox, Surface and Kinect? Biometrics in the OS? Taking it's huge market share and moving to a business model that looks more like Apple's?

More questions than answers, I know. But if you have 12 minutes, give it a watch and see if the same isn't true for you.

To touch on the biometrics a bit, it looks like the capability billed as voice recognition is indeed true voice recognition and speech recognition rather than speech recognition alone. A post dealing with the distinction is here. Each of the two people in the video tell the system to "show my stuff" and the software shows different sets of "stuff" even though prompted in identical terms by the different users.

I'm not exactly sure what the presenters mean when they mention that the system distinguishes among individuals by skeletal structure, but in the Skype demonstration the technology does seem to recognize a dog as something worth paying attention.

Tesco adopting demographic detection marketing technology

FAST COMPANY - British supermarket chain Tesco is installing a face-scanning technology in all of its 450 gas stations. The technology uses cameras to identify the age and sex of store customers to target ads at customers who are waiting in line to pay.

Governor of Bayelsa, Nigeria to State employees: No biometrics; no paycheck.

Workers not captured by biometric will forfeit salaries –Dickson (National Mirror)

Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, yesterday warned that civil and public servants not captured in the ongoing verification and biometric exercise would forfeit their salaries from January next year.

“On schedule, within budget and within scope.”

Next Generation Identification: A closer look at the FBI’s billion-dollar biometric program (Biometric Update)

Representing a $1.2 billion investment by the U.S. federal government, the FBI’s massive Next Generation Identification (NGI) program is a ten-year lifecycle project that hinges on biometric identification technologies and has seen privacy advocates butt heads with law enforcement since its inception.

Split into six “increments,” Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract in 2008 to design, build and implement the program on behalf of the FBI, which ultimately aims to enhance the abilities of the agency’s aging IAFIS from the mid-nineties.

More at the link.