The joke voted the funniest at the Edinburgh Fringe this year was about an unlikely subject: “I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”Several approaches to shoring up the password authentication regime are discussed at the link.
Recent nationwide crime statistics show that New York City and its outlying suburbs has become one of the safest cities of its size in the past 15 years. Nevertheless, in a sprawling metropolitan area encompassing New York and New Jersey, security is always a concern.
“People are either interested in security or they’re not. There are plenty of options out there for a condo or co-op to better protect their building,” says Harry Squasoni, senior vice president of American Security Systems, based in Long Island City. “Most buildings still have keys, which is the worst security alive. Keys go to girlfriends, boyfriends, contractors…you have no idea who has keys to your building.”
An e-gate system will be introduced at Taiwan's three main airports -- in Taoyuan County, Taipei and Kaohsiung -- to expedite immigration clearance for Taiwanese citizens. The unmanned gates will verify the biometric data of passengers passing through.
In today's revelations, Apple introduces us to a more down to earth and practical security system for our portable devices. For simple home or personal use, the system could be setup to recognize your presence and face to quickly turn on your device. This would bypass the need for entering a password or even having to touch the home button to get to your homepage. For use at work, the facial recognition system could be set to higher levels of security. All in all it sounds like a very promising security system is in our future.I highly recommend this article.
At the meeting of the Adriatic Charter Countries in Tirana on December 14th, Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro signed an agreement allowing citizens of all three countries to travel with a passport and biometric ID cards to and from the respective countries.
About 55 students are enrolled in either the two- or four-year biometric security degree programs at Davenport, a 141-year-old school of 13,500 students with its main campus in Grand Rapids.
Biometric security - which identifies people based on unique personal characteristics - has become more common since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Government agencies and private businesses are investing in biometric devices that grant or block access after scanning fingerprints, eyes, facial features or vocal patterns.
"With the CCTNS in place, all information will be available online. Information regarding fingerprints, unidentified bodies, missing persons, stolen vehicles, stolen arms, etc, will be just a click away. At present, if we need information about a suspect, we send intimations to our counterparts in other states. This is a time-consuming process," said Dhiware.
He said that the data was being fed into the computers at the stations where the system was being installed. "Police personnel are also being trained in handling the software."
Other CID officials said the CCTNS would create a national databank of crime and criminals and their biometric profiles. This database will have details of the criminal justice system including courts, jails, immigration, passport authorities, forensic labs, transport department, mobile companies, central agencies etc, in a phased manner.
Before the mid 1800s, law enforcement officers with extraordinary visual memories, so called “camera eyes”, identified previously arrested offenders by sight. Photography lessened the burden on memory but was not the final answer, since personal appearances change.There's more on the history of ID, the Bertillion system, and current legal and corporate applications.
Even more surprising is the absence of oil sector scam from the long list of scams getting national attention today. The PDS scam, involving an even larger amount of money, has failed to get the attention it deserves. Diversion of PDS kerosene and residential LPG is generating about Rs 52,000 crore on an annual basis. This should make it the mother of all scams in India. When other lesser scams are associated with some well known political leaders, the oil sector scam involves thousands of politicians, bureaucrats and petty businessmen at all levels. There is no single political leader or one political party who can be blamed for the oil sector scam.Let's run some numbers.
“We had certified around a thousand typing centres across the country to carry out the pre-registration process. Now the new online application system means we are certifying thousands of internet-savvy people in the country to carry out their pre-registration process,” he explained. It may be recalled that Gulf News had earlier reported complaints received from people about errors introduced by typing centres in application forms. Emirates ID had cancelled the certification of several typing centres following repeated complaints....
Many residents had also complained about typing centres asking applicants to leave their original passports with them to complete applications thus exposing them to the risk of identity theft.Another article touches upon the types of transactions that will make use of the new ID...
The Emirates ID card has been made mandatory for completing transactions at the Abu Dhabi Retirement Pensions fund, as well as at the Department of Real Estate Registration in Sharjah from January 1. The Sharjah Department of Real Estate Registration had announced that the ID card will be a mandatory requirement for completing any transactions at the department as of January 2012. The department has linked the ID card to all services rendered, including title deeds, registration, mortgages and other transactions. Eida has provided smart card readers to the department, to read data from the cards electronically and carry out transactions more efficiently.
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:
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 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.
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.
The driver’s seat is fitted with 360 sensors that measure pressure according to a scale of zero to 256. Each reading is plotted to create a 3-D image — essentially a topographic map of your ass — used as a personal identifier. Anytime someone gets behind the wheel, the system analyzes the shape of their behind. If it isn’t your rear end in the seat, the car isn’t going anywhere.
"It's also important to draw a contrast between violations of privacy that lead to more spam, phishing and identity fraud and the kind of privacy violation that can lead to political persecution, torture, prison and loss of life."I've also been known to make a big deal out of the difference between Privacy and Anonymity (even more here).
It's important to draw a contrast between the type of anonymity that can protect against more spam, social awkwardness and a loss of privacy in public and the kind of anonymity that can lead to political powerlessness, lack of social mobility, poverty and a shortened lifespan.People with a legitimate ID tend to think of anonymity in terms of the first formulation, those who have anonymity forced upon them tend to suffer from the afflictions of the second formulation.
This thought-provoking article addresses the issue of what happens to biometric information (or any other military intelligence, for that matter) when a military campaign is wound down.
The digital database is the property of Central Command’s intelligence shop in Tampa, Florida. It is conspicuously not in the control of the Iraqi government. Taylor says that the Iraqis might be able to access the database’s contents if they go “through the [U.S.] embassy” in Baghdad.
“Common sense-wise, we still have an interest there in helping our Iraqi partners,” Taylor explains, “and that information might be helpful to them should there be any issues.”
Taylor doesn’t say why the U.S. didn’t hand over its biometrics toy to the Iraqis. But there’s an obvious reason: Iraq’s sectarian divides have not healed. And a database filled with uber-specific information about approximately 10 percent of Iraq’s population could represent a wish list for a death squad, militia or insurgent group — some of which are aligned with Iraqi political parties.
Upon arrival at the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station, the subjects' biographical and biometric information were submitted into the Integrated Automated Identification System (IAFIS) and additional data bases. One of the two subjects was later identified as 28-year old Erick Daniel Garcia-Garcia, a citizen of Chihuahua, Mexico.
Garcia's background information revealed that he was wanted out of Boulder County, Colorado for "Failure to Appear in Court for Sexual Assault on a Child/Felony" and "Crimes against Persons."
“The process of issuing NID card cannot gain pace unless law minister gives his nod to the NID bill,” the source added.
NIDMC had hired a Canada-based international smart card consultant Ardaman Singh Kohli for 20 months to prepare the DPR with assistance from the Asian Development Bank.
According to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the idea is to eliminate the time inspection officers spend manually entering document information into a computer as well as increase security for officers. Also touted by Unisys as heralding a 21st century approach to processing millions of crossings every year, the El Paso system was erected under a 2010 contract awarded to the company.This well-written and richly detailed article reminded me of some of the issues surrounding a similar implementation on the Malaysia-Singapore border earlier this year.
But on recent days, pedestrians crossing the Paso del Norte Bridge into El Paso have encountered long delays. A little more than three weeks after the new pedestrian processing lanes were opened, this reporter and a friend spent about 1 hour and 40 minutes waiting to cross back into El Paso.
The Election Commission today announced the use of indelible ink and advanced voting for the coming general election.
Finland is introducing biometric residence permit cards at the beginning of 2012. At the same time residence permit stickers for travel documents will be discontinued.
Changes to the Aliens Act enter force on 1 January 2012, from which date the granting of biometric residence permit cards will begin. Technical delays in the introduction of fingerprint scanning mean that in the beginning fingerprints will only be added to card chips by degrees. If technical problems prevent the scanning of a residence permit applicant's fingerprints, a remark to this effect will be added to the residence permit card chip.
Notwithstanding this deficiency, the card remains a fully authoritative proof of the right of residence for the duration of its validity.
