At least 99.27% of Ghanaian voters verified by fingerprint

Almost 80,000 voted by face-only verification – Afari – Gyan (Ghana Web)

The Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan on Thursday May 30, 2013, told the Supreme Court in the election petition trial that there were close to 80, 000 voters who were designated as ‘Face-Only’ (FO) voters because the biometric registration machines failed to capture their finger prints during the registration exercise.

Explaining himself further in Court on Thursday, at the start of his evidence-in-chief for the second respondent, Dr. Afari Gyan said among those classified as FO voters were eligible voters who had suffered “permanent trauma” and “temporary trauma”.

He explained permanent trauma to mean voters who had no fingers at all for which reason their fingerprints could not have been captured by the biometric verification machine.

Temporary trauma sufferers, according to Dr. Afari-Gyan, were those who had fingers alright, but nonetheless did not have fingerprints to have been captured by the machine.

He said those two categories of voters were captured in the register as people who could only be identified by their faces before voting since their fingerprints could not be captured by the biometric verification equipment.

Any identification system has to plan for exceptions. This is true whether the ID measure in place is a metal key, an ID card, a PIN, a fingerprint or any combination of ID technologies.

More on exceptions.

A Ghana Web article on exception planning published in early 2012 is here, so the subject of unverifiable biometrics isn’t a surprise.

Instead, let’s deal with the numbers.

According to the article quoted above 80,000 (and that seems to be an upper bound rather than a firm total) voters were given blank ballots without fingerprint ID verification. Some portion of that number would have been definitively established during the voter registration process as people missing hands and fingers as they completed the voter registration process.

The image below (also from Ghana Web) shows candidates, percentage of votes received, and. more importantly for our purposes, raw vote total:

The combined number of votes in parentheses below each candidate’s name comes to 10,995,262. Eighty thousand votes represents 0.73% of the almost eleven million votes cast. The margin of victory between the top two vote-getters was 325,863 votes and they were separated by 2.96% of the total vote.

As far as elections go, having the margin of error less than the margin of victory is a good thing. In this case 0.73% < 2.96% means that the 80,000 unverified votes could not have affected who received the most votes.

Moreover, no one yet asserts that votes cast without fingerprint biometric verification could have favored any one candidate either because there was a systematic attempt to circumvent the biometric verification for fraudulent purposes or because of a geographic disparity in the 80,000 (maximum) exceptions that might have favored one candidate over another.

The bigger story appears to be:
99.27% of the votes in the recent election were cast by biometrically verified legitimate voters.

The last time there was a presidential election, that number was zero and given increased familiarity with the technology and expected improvements in both biometric hardware and software, expect that 99.27% number to increase for the next election.

Ghana, and other countries contemplating fully biometric elections should be heartened by these results.

 

Countries are coming to know their poor by name

The Economist, has published a really good piece about the progress made in reducing global extreme poverty over the last twenty years and what it might take to finish the job over the next twenty.

Biometric smart cards get a mention toward the end in the passage below, but this is not a biometrics story, it’s a story of how and why poverty, which used to be an effect of scarcity, can now be defined and addressed as a series of organizational challenges. Biometrics are helping people meet those challenges and we’re proud of the work we’ve done in helping that process along.

Poverty: Not always with us (The Economist)

[…B]y 2030 nearly two-thirds of the world’s poor will be living in states now deemed “fragile” (like the Congo and Somalia). Much of the rest will be in middle-income countries. This poses a double dilemma for donors: middle-income countries do not really need aid, while fragile states cannot use it properly. A dramatic fall in poverty requires rethinking official assistance.

Yet all the problems of aid, Africa and the intractability of the final billion do not mask the big point about poverty reduction: it has been a hugely positive story and could become even more so. As a social problem, poverty has been transformed. Thanks partly to new technology, the poor are no longer an undifferentiated mass. Identification schemes are becoming large enough—India has issued hundreds of millions of biometric smart cards—that countries are coming to know their poor literally by name. That in turn enables social programmes to be better targeted, studied and improved. Conditional cash-transfer schemes like Mexico’s Oportunidades and Brazil’s Bolsa Família have all but eradicated extreme poverty in those countries.

Five Country Conference increases interoperability

NEW ZEALAND: Fingerprints catch out immigration fraudster (TV NZ)

[Immigration New Zealand] found that her fingerprints matched those of a person who had entered Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom using different names.

INZ says landmark cooperation between authorities in all four countries resulted in the successful prosecution.

INZ’s Identity Services manager Jacqui Martin says this is the first time evidence like fingerprints gathered as a result of cooperation under the Five Countries Conference (FCC) has been used in a prosecution for immigration fraud.

Score one for the Five Country Conference.

Face rec for quality assurance

Edinburgh Airport installs biometric system to track passenger movements (Computerworld UK)

An anonymous facial image is taken of each passenger as they check in and the time it takes each to reach certain waypoints plotted over time. If this time breaches a pre-set parameter for enough passengers, alerts can be generated.

The principle is that moving passengers from check in to the terminal increases their satisfaction with that airport and boosts the amount of time they have to spend money in the retail outlets that generate profit for airports.

The system can also be used to track the movement of passengers through the airport as a whole.

This is another really interesting application for facial recognition technology and, unlike other uses of face technology better described as demographic detection, this one actually is a true face recognition application.

Although it is a true face recognition application, it isn’t really an ID application so long as the facial image taken at the time of passenger is not linked to other personal information and it is deleted after the person reaches the “finish line.”

The item of interest to airports in this case is the length of time it takes real individuals to travel through various points between check in and the jetway. It’s a more sophisticated measure than a simple count and real-world measurement wasn’t easily automated before face recognition technology.

Airports in the UK have been early adopters of face recognition for this application because they are held to certain performance metrics (and subject to fines) for airport throughput. Having accurate real-time information on passenger flows can inform on-the-fly staffing decisions. For example, additional security screeners can be dispatched in the event a slow-down is detected, saving passenger time and the airport money.

Though airports have been early adopters, this basic application has obvious utility in shopping malls, department stores, planning for emergency evacuations, and large facility scheduling.

SecurLinx has experience in the design and deployment of this type of system. Our FaceTrac system is readily adapted to the challenge of on-the-fly enrollment, finish-line matching, reporting, and automatically purging image data.

Libya ponders national ID as an instrument of economic development

Libya takes steps to fight corruption (Foreign Policy – Reg. req.)

Libya’s General National Congress (GNC) is debating the newly introduced transparency and anti-corruption bill which they expect to vote on in the next few weeks. The Libyan government, led by Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, is taking practical steps toward fighting corruption and improving transparency in public institutions, following alarming reports of rampant corruption and financial waste in the public sector. These steps are also driven by huge public demand for immediate anti-corruption measures and transparency in post-revolution Libya.

On February 7, the government announced the National Identification Numbers (NID) project. By giving each person a unique number, the government will be able make sure that transfers and payments are going to the right people and avoid manipulations to the system.

It’s hard to help people if you can’t identify them.

Dikshit sics Nilekani on banks

CM seeks Nilekani’s intervention to clear obstacles in UID cash transfer (Indian Express)

Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Monday sought Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chairman Nandan Nilekani’s intervention in overcoming obstacles in opening accounts in banks, which the government maintained, had not rendered active cooperation. Dikshit said she also plans to write a letter to the Union Finance Minister in this regard shortly.

Following a meeting with Nilekani, Dikshit said the government was keen on increasing the number of beneficiaries under the Aadhaar-based direct cash transfers. “We hope to increase intended beneficiaries in Delhi to at least 30 lakh but there are still obstacles in opening bank accounts. This results in difficulties for beneficiaries,” Dikshit said.

It was about a year ago that Chief Minister Dikshit reached out to Mr. Nilekani to help lift the pace of UID enrollment in Delhi.

Delhi is one of the most populated cities in the world. It’s also right next to/contains India’s capital of New Delhi (see Delhi or New Delhi: What’s the Delhio?). So, if UID is to be considered a success at streamlining the welfare system through cash transfers, it needs to succeed in Delhi.

Czech Republic: ID hack, performance art, social commentary

How 12 Men Morphed Identities and Still Voted, Bought Guns, and Got Married (Motherboard)

Source: ZTOHOVEN

Basically, twelve members of the collective swapped identities, snagging themselves digitally-altered ID cards that featured blended images of their portrait and another person’s. Make Money Not Art explains further: “With the same haircut, twelve members of Ztohoven took a portrait pictures and using the Morphing software they merged every two faces into one. They applied for new IDs with these photos, but each of them used the name of his alter-ego.”

For six months, they then lived under each others’ identities, purchasing guns, voting, and even getting married. They documented the entire project, which, in a nod to Kafka’s identity-thieved Josef, they called Citizen K.

Sounds like an advertisement for facial recognition audits of ID card applications.

Official web page for “Citizen K.” (English)

Permanent UID service centers

UIDAI launches new services, permanent enrolment centres (NetIndian)

The services that were launched today are Authentication service using Iris, Authentication service using One-Time PIN and eKYC (Electronic- Know Your Customer) service.

Launching the services, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said they would give a boost to the use of the Aadhar identity platform for authenticating the identity of people.

“This is a transformational initiative, and I am sure the Aam Aadmi (common man) will start reaping the benefits of the Aadhaar project in the near future,” he said.

Interview with James Wayman

Very good interview at Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) with James Wayman on face recognition and other biometrics. Mr. Wayman is the former director of the National Biometric Test Center at San Jose State University and is now an administrator in its Office of Graduate Studies and Research.

Will Face Recognition Ever Capture Criminals? (IEEE.org)

Okay, so, let’s start historically with the technology. It was developed in the early 1960s by a fellow named Woodrow W. Bledsoe, who I believe was an IEEE member. He later retired at the University of Texas at Austin. And what he was doing was marking facial images by hand—the centers of the eyes, the corners of the eyes, the corners of the lips, and the like. And then he projected these marks onto a sphere and he rotated the sphere, trying to get marks from two different images to line up, at which point he could say, aha, these are from the same person.

Well, all of this hand marking didn’t work so well, and in the late 1980s, Sirovich and Kirby came out with this very simplistic idea that is so simple it sounds like it’ll never possibly work, but it did.”

For those who prefer listening to reading, there’s also a podcast…

What happens when you run satellite images through a face recognition engine?

It has been a long time since we’ve had a biometrics in art post…

These Artists Are Mapping the Earth … With Facial Recognition Software (The Atlantic)  

Have you ever looked up into the sky and seen a cloud that vaguely resembles your mom? Or gazed at the twisted trunk of a tree, only to see an old man staring back at you? Then you have experienced pareidolia, the human mind’s tendency to read significance into random stimuli. You have learned what children and poets have long held true: that anything — any place — can be a canvas for a human face.

Source: onformative.com. Cropping ours.

Also: check out the artists’ site: onformative.com. There are a lot more images there.

The way we perceive our environment is a complex procedure. By the help of our vision we are able to recognize friends within a huge crowd, approximate the speed of an oncoming car or simply admire a painting. One of human’s most characteristic features is our desire to detect patterns. We use this ability to penetrate into the detailed secrets of nature. However we also tend to use this ability to enrich our imagination. Hence we recognize meaningful shapes in clouds or detect a great bear upon astrological observations.

Face recognition, marketing and privacy

It’s Your Face. Or Is It? (Press Release at Marketwire)

“From a marketer’s point of view it’s heaven. They can tailor ads, products, even prices based on your age, tax bracket, social media persona and purchasing habits. Marketers will pay handsomely for that information.” For example, NEC has developed a marketing service utilizing facial recognition technology. It estimates the age and sex of customers, along with the dates and number of times that customers go to each store. This information is then analyzed to help predict trends in customer behavior and shopping frequency.

“From a consumer’s point of view this could be a nightmare — the ultimate invasion of privacy.”

Johnson continues, “I’m not just a brand strategist. I’m also a consumer. And I’d like to speak with the voice of reason. New technology can offer enormous benefits. It also comes with enormous responsibility.” Johnson firmly believes we are collectively charged with that responsibility. We have to ensure this facial recognition technology does not become an all out assault on our privacy. “Do we want our children to be added to these facial databases? Probably not. Do we ourselves want to be added without our knowledge or permission? Probably not.”

We tackled the very interesting topics of marketing and the privacy of faces in this post from 2011.

It’s also worth noting that there are two different ways facial recognition technology can be applied to marketing in the bricks-and-mortar world. True face recognition matching a face to a unique individual so as to send a marketing message tailored for that one person is still pretty hard. Inferring demographic traits of a person by using facial analysis technologies does not rely on a unique identification and may provide a bigger bang for the buck (ROI) than true facial recognition.

IDaaS

Identity as a Service poised for run in enterprise (ZDNet)

Identity and Access as a Service is poised for a strong run at enterprises of all size, and those who have done their homework will dodge the hype and know what’s right for them and what’s not.

By the end of 2015, Identity and Access as a Service (IDaaS) will account for 25% of all new identity and access management sales, compared with 5% in 2012, according to recent Gartner research “Are You and the IDaaS Market Ready for Each Other?” [ed. link in orig]

The US Army’s big data cloud app suite

Army demonstrates disputed intelligence system (Army Times)

“It is globally deployed, this is not a system that is in the lab, this is a system that is supporting and has supported nine corps, 38 divisions, 138 brigades,” said Lt. Gen. Mary Legere, the the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence. “It supports today our operations in Afghanistan and the greater Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, Korea and anywhere you have soldiers who are deployed.”

The Army’s cloud-based system — called the Distributed Common Ground System-Army — collects raw intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data from 600 sources, including battlefield reports, biometrics databases, unmanned aerial systems and manned reconnaissance aircraft, as well as joint, national and strategic sources. From there, analysts can connect the dots using a variety of software tools, putting actionable intelligence in the hands of battlefield commanders.

Forty apps using data from 600 sources.

Sameer Sharma gets it…

Making cash transfers work: A one-size-fits-all plan to implement cash transfers is unlikely to work in India. Tailoring to local needs is the key

If cash transfers are to fulfil their promise of being a “game changer”, then a paradigm shift has to occur from the supply-to-demand-side subventions. Top driven supply-side interventions get morphed beyond recognition as they pass through several implementation layers.

Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom’s work in developing countries shows how this happens: in the unique culture of India, people rely more on locally crafted “rules in use”, as opposed to drilled down “rules in form”. And such transformation can be reduced by minimizing the distance between the rules in form and use. This can happen, for example, by giving greater choice to the poor to make the best use of money depending on situational rules in use.

Read the whole thing and if you haven’t watched this video yet, here’s another chance.

See also:
BigID and the changing nature of national identity infrastructures

US: Entry/exit dominating today’s biometrics news

An amendment to the immigration bill being discussed in the Senate Judiciary Committee has been all over the news this morning.

See:
Senators propose fingerprinting at airport security (Click Orlando), and
US senators approve immigration changes requiring fingerprint system at 30 airports (Truth Dive)

This Reuters piece is more detailed:
US panel votes to speed up airport fingerprinting of immigrants (Reuters)

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-5 for an amendment to a wide-ranging immigration bill that would require the installation of devices to check immigrants’ fingerprints at the 10 busiest U.S. airports within two years of enactment of the legislation.

Checks currently are made at airports for foreigners arriving and re-entering the country but not when they leave. “It’s just a matter of having records we can keep so we know where we’re going,” Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah told reporters of his successful amendment.

The committee’s work commands worldwide attention because it’s personal to many people because of their own travel habits, aspirations for immigration or education, or the living situation of friends or loved-ones.

It is also of worldwide importance because the United States will have a large role to play in any eventual interoperable international system accounting for international travel.

The amendment adopted by the committee would, in the event of the bill’s passage, institute a fingerprint-based entry/exit system starting with the ten busiest U.S. airports over two years.

The best framing I have read of the lack of-, case for-, and challenges associated with a decent entry/exit system is David Grant’s Immigration reform: What to do about those who arrive legally but never leave?

And in March, we wrote:

[… R]elevant to integrating the entry and exit points is the percentage of international travelers who enter a country through one international travel node and depart the country from another.

The more nodes, the more travelers, the more complex the travel patterns of international visitors, all of these things place additional pressures on any sort of entry/exit system and these complexities don’t necessarily increase as a linear function.

Of course all of this has bearing on the United States which has every challenge there is. It’s not surprising that, biometrics or no biometrics, the US lacks a comprehensive integrated entry/exit system. A couple of good pilot projects might go a long way towards getting an idea of the exact scope of some of the challenges, though. [emph. added]

With that in mind, does the committee’s amendment fit in with the idea of a “good pilot” project? I think so. Despite reluctance to call anything happening in the ten busiest airports in the country a “pilot project,” so as not to trivialize the challenges involved, the scope of a truly comprehensive entry/exit system accounting for all air, sea and land transport is so vast that it does make “pilot project” seem appropriate here.

But in order for this avenue to a pilot actually to lead there, even in two years, the whole immigration bill currently being fashioned in the Judiciary Committee must pass the full U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Even if the broader immigration overhaul fails to attract majority legislative support, the 13-5 committee vote may bode well for the pilot on a stand-alone basis. You have to start somewhere.