Press Release: AmberVision Unveils Program to Help Protect Oregon's Children

(Portland, Oregon) – An advanced technology tool is now available to Oregon police departments that will provide parents greater peace-of-mind for their children’s safety.

A nationally used database system called AmberVision, designed to help law enforcement officials in cases of missing children, is being introduced to school districts and parents in the state of Oregon.  Jim Isaacson, Oregon representative for AmberVision, says “AmberVision heightens the awareness of missing children through the community and media, and provides parents a proactive opportunity to enhance their child’s safety."

One of the most important tools law enforcement needs in missing children cases is immediate access to a high-quality photograph of the child in question.  AmberVision provides the ability for law enforcement agencies to access a child’s picture and description quickly.  It also provides them the ability to instantly distribute this critical information to other agencies, media, officers in the field, etc., all in an effort to save valuable time.

By registering online for AmberVision, parents have the ability to upload a current digital picture and description of their child to a secure database. Parents also have the ability to modify and update this information, as needed, via a username and password they create.  In cases of missing and abducted children, law enforcement officials, with read-only access, can view the data and within minutes, distribute it to the necessary parties.

The cost of enrollment for parents to utilize the database is $11.99 per year, per child.  “It’s an easy, user-friendly enrollment process (www.ambervision.org).  The overall goal of AmberVision (not for profit foundation) is to heighten child safety awareness to parents and communities, provide law enforcement another tool to aide in the safe recovery of a child, allow all children to participate regardless of their financial condition, and provide parents a proactive opportunity to participate in their child’s safety.

Through the AmberVision Foundation, free enrollment is offered to children who participate in the school lunch program”, Isaacson said.  

AmberVision has been implemented in communities throughout the country.  Isaacson said, “Some Oregon schools have already distributed information to parents, and we plan to share AmberVision with all communities throughout the State”.

The system, funded by a grant from the Department of Justice in 2005, was originally developed as a paper-based program called AmberView and tested in the state of West Virginia.  After deemed a success, the program was converted to an online service and offered nationally as AmberVision in late 2009.  SecurLinx, a leader in biometric identity management systems and technology partner to AmberView, has created the AmberVision Foundation in order to help keep our communities safe for children and their families.

To avoid ID, more are mutilating fingerprints

Boston.com

H/T @heidishey

Some think these systems don't work.

So desperate was one man to conceal his identity that he began biting his fingers and drawing blood while being booked.

Some have used eyedroppers filled with acid or pressed their fingers onto burning metal to blot their fingerprints. Others have spent thousands of dollars to hire shady doctors to surgically alter their fingertips, hoping to scar them beyond recognition.

I guess these guys disagree.

AmberVision: Helping West Virginia Authorities Find Missing Children

WSAZ.com (Huntington/Charleston, WV)

The Ambervision program will kick off this fall in all West Virginia public schools. Parents will have access to a database that will allow them to change or add pertinent information about their child's appearance.

In the video below, Lisa Cordiero of the WV Board of Education does an excellent job of describing how AmberVision will work in West Virginia as well as the history behind the AmberVision Foundation.

Biometrics: it's not about the technology

Info4Security.com
Thanks to @heidishey for bringing my attention back to this excellent article by Bruce Lyman, CEO at Argus Global.

Good technology underpins many processes, both inside and without the business and, as many end users will know, understanding how technology works is rarely integral to its usefulness.

Indeed, technological excellence can in some part be measured by how little we need to know about a product to be able to use it. Such is the case with biometric technology, where the biometric itself is only part of the story.

Our real interest concerns (a) how easy it is to use on a daily basis, and by staff of varying technical aptitude and (b) what are the possible outcomes of using this technology?

Mr. Lyman goes on to examine biometric deployments in terms of Return on Investment (ROI), a topic close to our heart.

• Security ROI: the cost of making a mistake
• Productivity ROI: improvements to the business
• Financial ROI: making the strongest case

Iris vs. Finger

The future of iris scanning - ZDNetAsia.com

UPDATE: This post gets a fair amount of traffic. The link above no longer seems to work. A cached version of the article linked above may be available here. The page takes a while to load.

Biometrics has received a lot of bad press during its short life. Fingerprint technologies have issues many businesses, and security professionals, would rather not deal with. And then there is the cost. So is there a technology that may provide security, involve low maintenance costs, minimize management headaches, and is acceptable to users?

Author Tom Olzak does a good job of comparing fingerprint authentication systems to systems that use the eye's iris and he makes excellent points about their strengths and weaknesses.

As we like to say, there is no "universal donor" in biometric identity management deployments. In some cases fingerprints are the best, in others, face recognition will be the way to go. Function dictates form. A successful deployment requires a deep understanding of the use model.

FBI National Academy Associates, Boston

SecurLinx and AmberVision will be in Boston for the exhibition associated with the FBINAA festivities this weekend, July 24 & 25.

The Law Enforcement Exhibition is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday in the Hynes Convention Center, Hall C.

Law enforcement officers from the Boston area not attending the conference may obtain a Law Enforcement Day Pass to tour the exposition Saturday or Sunday. Department-issued photo ID required.

If you're in the area, please come visit us:
Booth 212.

Missing biometrics create unique problems for UID project

TheEconomicTimes (India) [Warning: site tries to open 5 pop-ups!]
This has been getting a lot of attention in the Twitterverse and elsewhere.

Scores of people the Aadhaar project will help the most do not have the sharp, curving lines on their fingers as depicted in its logo. Millions of Indians working in agriculture, construction workers and other manual labourers have worn-out fingers due to a lifetime of hard labour, resulting in what is euphemistically referred to in technical literature as ‘low-quality’ fingerprints. This is precisely the demographic that UID aims to help — those that are outside government records and welfare schemes.

While the UIDAI uses two other metrics — an iris scan and a photograph — in issuing the unique identity number, fingerprinting will be the metric used in authentication. This means a passport applicant with worn-out fingers may present his newly-issued UID number as a conclusive proof of identity, but could find the application rejected. The authentication process using a fingerprint scanner could classify the applicant’s worn-out fingers as a so-called ‘false negative’.

The Indian UID project has captured the public's attention. People are becoming aware of the promises and challenges of large scale biometric identity management deployments. This is a good thing.

On the technical front, "worn out" fingerprints don't present an insurmountable challenge to the Indian project. An ID management system that increases efficiency in the vast majority of transactions while presenting no new obstacles in the rare cases is a valuable system.

The proper way to evaluate a proposed identity management system is to compare the system currently in use to the expected performance of the envisioned system while balancing the costs of the new system against the improvements upon the old way of doing things. Too often, those skeptical about biometric ID management deployments start from the position that anything less than automated perfection is failure*. This attitude can impede the adoption of cost-saving improvements in critical organizational processes.

In adopting a multi-modal approach -- the UIDAI seems to have allowed for the use of iris for backup authentication as well as providing a photograph and an ID number -- it does not appear that India is creating an ID management system that will be unable to serve those with "worn out" fingerprints or those with disabilities that would prevent them from using a fingerprint based system.

*Similar thoughts here.

Safran Said to Be in Talks to Purchase Most of L-1 Identity Solutions Inc.

In March, we drew attention to reports that Bob LaPenta was putting L-1 on the auction block. It appears that the process is picking up steam.

From Bloomberg.com:

Safran is among the bidders pursuing a deal to buy L-1’s businesses that help customers track biometric data, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. U.S.-based L-1 is likely to be split up, with another buyer acquiring a separate unit that sells consulting services to U.S. intelligence agencies, said one of the people. No deal is likely to be reached for several weeks, the person said.

More information about Safran is available:
Safran-Group.com
BusinessWeek.com

Interesting questions for the future:
Will L-1 be bought whole or will it be sold off piecemeal?
Does the answer to the question above offer a verdict on L-1's strategy of acquisition rather than organic growth?

High-Tech Corridor Susceptible to Shrinking Federal Appropriations

The State Journal (West Virginia)
Here's a little hometown analysis of the impact that our federal legislators have had on the economy of West Virginia and what the death of Sen. Byrd, the primary defeat of Rep. Mollohan, and the commensurate loss of federal funding could mean to the area.

“When Sen. Byrd moved the FBI fingerprint operation into Clarksburg, as much of a visionary he was, I’m not sure even he could have fathomed the growth that that created for the state,” said Rick Gill, CEO of the Washington, D.C.-headquartered National Biometric Security Project, which maintains an operation in Morgantown.

Both of the cities in the quote are in West Virginia's I-79 Hi-Tech Corridor.

Facial Profiling: Will face-recognition technology get an accused killer off the hook?

San Francisco Weekly

In what legal and scientific experts say is a groundbreaking case, a San Francisco Superior Court judge allowed biometric facial-identification technology, along with accompanying testimony from an expert witness, to be admitted as evidence in a high-profile criminal trial.

And in a curious turn, biometrics — the science popularized for its use in attempts to catch terrorists — was being used in San Francisco to try to exonerate an accused gang member and murderer.

As pointed out here, biometric identity management systems are tools that work both ways. The technology can be used by defendants as well as prosecutors.

This lengthy article, however, is pretty pessimistic about face-rec in general. To this point, I would draw attention to the fact that there is a huge difference between attended and unattended systems (a more complete resource for how to categorize different systems is here).

Several years ago, a surveillance experiment at a train station in Mainz, Germany, found that automated facial recognition had a success rate of only 60 percent during the day and as low as 10 percent at night, when poor lighting made identification more difficult.

The system described in Mainz, above is an unattended system used on non-cooperative, non-habituated individuals in a public, non-standard environment. 60% is nothing to sneeze at and the proper frame of reference is 0% (the number of people identified in the absence of a system) not 100%. So, Mainz went from 0% identifications to 60% in the daytime (possibly) without any spending on human resources and this is failure?

Poorly calibrated expectations are a real issue in the biometrics sphere. We in the industry need to make sure that we are setting reasonable expectations for our customers and helping them to craft systems that meet their needs. We have an obligation to deliver value and an incentive to educate our customers.

Quick Hits

‘India’s e-governance projects are relevant all over the world’
(FinancialExpress.com) - a brief interview with Ger Daly.

planetbiometrics.com, a New Biometrics web portal

L-1 Identity cuts Q2 revenue view; shares down (Reuters)

International Biometrics & Identification Association to Focus Efforts on the Growing Issue of Identity Management

Forbes.com

The International Biometrics & Identification Association (IBIA) today announced that it has expanded its mission to focus on the overall issue of determining identity. This new mandate, one which will see biometric and other technologies play an increasingly important role, has been deemed critical by the IBIA, given the rise of authentication issues facing data security, identity theft, immigration and homeland security.

This makes sense. Biometrics are a means to an end. Identity management is the goal.

Poway Tells Skaters to Give Them the Finger

msnbc.com

Park-goers will be required to have their fingerprints and photos on file with the city, the paper said.

This kind of usage can be confusing.

All fingerprint access control systems store a template generated from a person's fingerprint. It is not possible to "reverse engineer" a template into a complete image of the fingerprint that created it. In this limited use case it cannot be said that fingerprints are on file with the City.

Other fingerprint access control systems do store an image of the fingerprint as well as the template generated from it. In this use case, it is accurate to say that fingerprints are on file with the City.

The article implies that the system in place in Poway is of the latter sort.

Related thoughts about a different system can be found here.

Why face recognition isn't scary -- yet

CNN.com
For those interested in facial recognition, the article linked above provides insight in to the uses and limitations of the technology. It also provides information about a few places where people can gain firsthand experience with facial recognition applications using their family photos.

The epic marketing challenge for UID

LiveMint.com

On the technical side, biometric identity management is about the physical facts of a person in a given environment, communication, databases, sensors, permissions, etc. Once an organization works through these details, a successful biometric deployment becomes possible.

But there is a social component to almost all identity management deployments outside of prisons. ID management (biometric or not) only works if it isn't subverted by the users. If users are careless with keys, passwords and proximity cards; if doors are propped open or those with access allow others to "tailgate," the effectiveness of the ID management system is undermined.

India's UID project (once again) provides a useful window into how organizations manage the cultural side of a large-scale identity management deployment and the things that must be considered. The linked article provides insight into the India project's efforts at stakeholder marketing.

Combined, they have more than 150 years of marketing experience.

All were headhunted by Maruwada, who looked to bring the country’s most experienced minds in communications, marketing and advertising to tackle what is arguably the UIDAI’s most important challenge—marketing the idea of a universal government identity to citizens from every caste, region and religion.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Identity management is about people.

AmberVision State-Wide Rollout

Ambervision to help West Virginia authorities recover missing children (Herald Dispatch - Huntington, WV)

"The Department of Education is committed to keeping West Virginia's children free from harm," said state Superintendent of Schools Steve Paine. "Ambervision adds to our ability to keep every child safe and increases the chances of a good outcome in the unfortunate event of a missing child."

The AmberVision system will be adopted state-wide in West Virginia this fall.

Biometrics and Governance

CCTVs to monitor DC (Deputy Commissioner's) office employees: (The Times of India)

HUBLI: The ‘I don't care' attitude of the government employees who are accustomed to coming late, taking multiple breaks for tea, cigarettes and chatting during office hours will be a thing of past, at least in Dharwad.

The CCTV cameras and biometric machines which hitherto were only seen in corporate and other private offices have found its way into the deputy commissioner's office in Dharwad, making it probably the first DC office in the state to install it in a bid to discipline the government servants, who normally are blamed for taking their work lightly.

Many see the implementation of biometric identity management systems as enhancing government power over the people. As this article shows, they can also be implemented to increase the people's power over their government.

Farm of the Week: Producer clocks in with IT system to control costs

YorkshirePost.co.uk

"It might sound hard, but more accuracy means more fairness, for both staff and customers," says Mr Machin. "Thirty percent of our costs are labour. The more we pin costs down, the more choice we have about how to distribute rewards. And the better we get at pricing our produce, the more customers we bring in."

This article shows how new technologies, including biometric identity management technologies, are helping small businesses generate the data that help them operate with the same type of information large companies have been using for ages.

These identity management technologies combined with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) techniques are allowing small businesses to arrive at a precise calculation of costs, taking the guesswork out of pricing decisions. Moreover, the return on investment is significant.

"I would say our original investment in the time and management system has repaid already. The wages calculation, for example, used to take a couple of days. Now it is a matter of hours."

UPEK Terminates AuthenTec Proxy Contest and Merger Proposal after Grady's Resignation as Chairman of AuthenTec's Board of Directors

From ConsumerElectronicsNet.com

In his letter Grady explicitly says: 'My decision results from my increasing discomfort with the Company's de facto embrace of the status quo, and tolerance of management leadership's actions to resist value-creating transactions. I believe that the Board and management of AuthenTec should take decisive action to enhance shareholder value, but that view, supported in concept, is not reflected in actions. Enhancing shareholder value needs to be more than a talking point.'

The events described in this article concern two fingerprint sensor manufacturers, but you can expect to see many more articles of this nature over the next few years.

The biometric identity management sector will see rapid consolidation for several reasons:

• The most coveted customers for biometric identity management solutions are very large organizations, while the suppliers of goods and services tend to be very small companies. The big companies know that the little companies don't have the depth to support them. This doesn't mean that deals don't get done. The small tech. firms can and do partner up with large scale IT integrators to meet the needs of large customers, but this model presents its own challenges.
• Investors in early- and development-stage tech start-ups would like to see the beginnings of a possible exit strategy. It's not that they all want out; it's just that all investors are investors because they would like to earn a return. Without shareholder liquidity, an exit from an investment and the actualization of the commensurate gain or loss is difficult.
• The current investment and economic environment means that firms in the sector will fail and their assets will accrue to the remaining firms.
• The firms, themselves, and their boards will see growth opportunities and increased liquidity and heightened ability to support their customers without outside assistance as they grow larger through acquisition.
  

India Proposes Tighter Laws for National ID Project

CIO.com

The Indian agency assigned by the government to issue identity numbers has proposed stiff penalties, including imprisonment, for anybody found misusing personal biometric and other information that it collects.

We've had our eye on the Indian census for a couple of different reasons: the size, scope, ambition and audacity of the effort is unprecedented.

We have focused most of our attention on the technical aspects of the project. The article linked above deals with some of the cultural issues that must be addressed in any biometric identity management implementation, especially one on the scale of the India project.

At the end of the day, identity management is about people.