May 2013

chat, m2sys, tweetchat

May BiometricChat with Maxine Most from Acuity Market Intelligence

UPDATE II:
The transcript of the chat is now available.

UPDATE and bump:
John has published the questions to be discussed Thursday:

1. How can biometric vendors take a more active role in educating the public on misunderstandings about the technology to promote wider acceptance?

2. What are some of the mistakes you have observed from biometric vendors taking products to market that could have been avoided or may have adversely affected the success of their solutions? What advice can you offer vendors who are researching and developing new products and solutions that can help them to be successful?

3. What is your interpretation of recent biometric M&A activity and what types of trends can we expect to see in the near future?

4. Will the increased demand for biometric technology help to open the door for its use in additional verticals? If so, what markets do you feel can benefit the most from the technology?

5. I remember some time ago you were predicting that the private sector and public sector would generate about the same amount of revenue by 2014. Is that prediction still on target and what private sector markets to you see getting the most traction?

6. What area of the world do you feel holds the most potential for continued growth of biometric deployments and why?

Tuesday, May 13, 2013

When:
May 23, 2013 11:00 am EST, 8:00 am PST, 16:00 pm BST, 17:00 pm (CEST), 23:00 pm (SGT), 0:00 (JST)

Where:
tweetchat.com/room/biometricchat (or Twitter hashtag #biometricchat)

Host:
John at M2SYS

Guest:
Maxine Most of Acuity Market Intelligence. Maxine is a biometrics industry consultant. Acuity Market Intelligence has been involved in the biometrics marketplace for more than 10 years.

Topics:

  • Biometrics strategic market development
  • Maxine’s interpretation of industry mergers & acquisitions
  • What other markets could benefit from biometric technology
  • Private and public sector growth discrepancies
  • What areas of the world will continue to see strong growth for biometric deployments in the future

What is the BiometricChat:
Janet Fouts, at her blog, describes the format:

Twitter chats, sometimes known as a Twitter party or a tweet chat, happen when a group of people all tweet about the same topic using a specific tag (#) called a hashtag that allows it to be followed on Twitter. The chats are at a specific time and often repeat weekly or bi-weekly or are only at announced times.

There’s more really good information at the link for those who might be wondering what this whole tweet chat thing is all about.

This one, the #biometricchat,  is a discussion about a different topic of interest in the biometrics landscape each month. It’s like an interview you can participate in.

More at the M2SYS blog.

Earlier topics have included:
Privacy
Mobile biometrics
Workforce management
Biometrics in the cloud
Law enforcement
Privacy again
Biometrics for global development
Large-scale deployments
The global biometrics industry

Modalities such as iris and voice have also come in for individual attention.

I always enjoy these. Many thanks to John at M2SYS for putting these together.

Uganda, verification, vote, voter

Uganda President: Biometric voter verification for 2016

Museveni approves thumbprint use in 2016 (Daily Monitor)

“In future, all that [multiple voting] will stop. We are importing machines for thumb printing in 2016. We shall use thumbprints to know who this is and if you try to steal, the machine will throw you out,” Mr Museveni is quoted in a State House statement [ed. Yoweri Museveni is the president of Uganda].

Mr Museveni’s announcement comes weeks after the Electoral Commission (EC) released a roadmap to guide political parties and voters ahead of the 2016 polls which did not feature the use of thumbprint machines.

 

Uganda

The article’s commenters aren’t optimistic.

face, India, law enforcement, surveillance

India: Kerala police adopting face recognition for surveillance

Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple
Photo: Rainer Haessner

Face-recognition tool to curb crime (The Hindu)

The State police will soon have the latest face-recognition technology integrated with its expanding surveillance camera network to screen entry and exit points of airports, railway stations, stadiums, and key government offices for persons with criminal or terror links. Senior police officers say the technology is likely to be implemented first at the landmark Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple here and later at other locations, including vital establishments vulnerable to sabotage in Kochi and Kozhikode.

intelligence, modality, technology

Biometrics: A New Intelligence Discipline

New technological choices bring challenges (C4ISR Journal)

The intelligence community is pushing to make biometrically enabled intelligence — the art of identifying people by fingerprints, digital mugshots, iris scans or DNA — a regular part of business.
…
But other technologies are coming online. Facial recognition algorithms could someday riffle through mugshot databases to find matches much as fingerprint algorithms do today. Iris-matching technology is another field under development. Authorities around the world are rapidly switching from fingerprints to iris scans for verifying the identities of travelers and workers, and iris databases are growing. And some biometrics experts are aiming for multimodal biometrics in which fingerprint matches would be combined with facial recognition and other measurements to determine someone’s identity with maximum confidence.

Read the whole thing.

application, banking, BigID, credit card, documents, ID, infrastructure, Nigeria

BigID and the changing nature of national identity infrastructures

Nigeria’s new ID has apps!

Credit card linked to Nigerian ID (Financial Mail)

In the programme’s first phase, Nigerians aged 16 and older and all who have been resident there for more than two years will get the new multipurpose ID, which has 13 applications. It is expected that up to 13m Nigerians will use the product in the first phase.

Among the apps is MasterCard’s prepaid technology, which will give cardholders the ability to make electronic payments. MasterCard says this will also have a positive impact on Nigerians who until now have not had access to mainstream financial services.

This one bears keeping an eye on.

In a couple of pioneering cases, the very concept of “The ID” is shifting

To most people, an ID looks a lot like a product — something useful that the government sells to an individual. Pay your fee; get your card. Lose your card; buy a new one.

India and Nigeria (South Africa is pretty bold, too) are pointing the way toward a future where ID isn’t just a product, though no government is going to give up its ID card product line any time soon. The future as these countries see it is ID as a government-backed platform supporting an ID ecosystem. They have the bucket (database structure). Now it’s being filled (populated). If they get the application programming interface/s (API) right, fasten your seat belt. Things will get really interesting really fast as all sorts of apps hooking into the ID infrastructure become available. Biometric technologies will be an integral part of this transition to “BigID.”

UPDATE:
See also:
Brainstorming UID with Srikanth Nadhamuni
The video there is very informaative and extremely worthwhile.

UPDATE II:
I forgot to mention the UAE as another forward-thinking ID environment. The UAE ID is set to be deployed on smartphones.

enrollment, Tanzania, verification, vote, voter

Tanzania: Biometric voter registration without biometric verification at the polls

Tanzania: BVR Is for Voter Registration, Not Voting, Says NEC (All Africa)

NEC Vice-Chairman Judge (retired) Hamid Mahmoud Hamid clarified that people should take note of the fact that the system will only be used for registering voters and not for voting purposes. The commission’s Head of PNVR and ICT, Dr Sisti Cariah, said NEC will collaborate with the National Identification Authority (NIDA) to reduce costs since the latter is currently doing the same in its national identification project.

 

Tanzania

Here’s a piece, slightly edited, that we posted when initially it was reported that Ghana would forego biometric voter verification. Ultimately, Ghana decided to go for biometric voter verification, and despite some imperfections and a simmering dispute among political parties, they seem to have pulled it off. The same issues apply to the Tanzania voting infrastructure.

Originally posted May 15, 2012:

Without biometric verification, the whole enrollment exercise turns on the ID document. A document-dependent electoral system can be successful if three conditions are met: The process whereby legitimate documents are issued is very rigorous; The document is extremely difficult to counterfeit; And there is no significant corruption of the ballot-stuffing or ballot destroying variety.

Rigor in the document creation would include such measures as a real-time biometric query against the database of registered voters before issuing a new registration card in order to prevent duplicate registrations. Making a document difficult to forge involves high tech printing techniques or embedded biometrics for later verification. The corruption part is a function of culture and institutional controls.

Avoiding over-reliance on the physical ID document is perhaps the greatest benefit of using biometrics in elections. If there is no biometric voter verification, the only voting requirement is to have a more-or-less convincing registration card with a more-or-less convincing photo on it.

Biometric verification, by making the finger rather than the paper the overriding criterion for receiving a blank ballot, confers two tremendous advantages. Multiple voting can be made extremely difficult even for people who have multiple government issued registration cards. Second, ballot stuffing can be curbed because an audit of the total number of votes recorded can be compared to the number of fingerprints verified on election day as legitimate voters.

By creating the perception that the electoral apparatus is more effective than it really is, implementing a biometric voter enrollment system without biometric voter verification could even lead to more electoral uncertainty than the system being replaced.

A well-thought-out biometric voting system can reduce fraudulent voting to very low levels but it’s also possible to spend a lot of money on a leaky system that involves biometrics without accomplishing much in the way improving the integrity of the vote.

The same sort of analysis can, and should be applied in Tanzania.

forecast, market

Global biometrics market is anticipated to reach USD 20 Billion by 2018

Global Biometrics Market is Well Poised to Cross USD 20 Billion by 2018 Says TechSci Research (Press Release via Digital Journal)

The major share in biometrics technology has been figuratively captured by fingerprint recognition technology (AFIS & Non-AFIS). However, with the emergence of a lot of companies in this sector such as “Fujitsu Ltd” the market is poised for a stiff competition.

The government organizations have been the leading contributor to the industry which is anticipated to continue leading the market. In addition to that, large corporates have adopted biometric for logical as well as access control applications to increase the trust among their customers and employees.

Asia is anticipated to overtake North America by 2018 on account of huge growth in security market in the countries such as China and India. With the increasing IT security spending and growing government project in China, Indonesia, India and others will spur the demand for biometric systems.

Logical access control applications are growing rapidly with the increase in computer hardware and Internet. In addition, vein recognition technology is growing rapidly due to advancement in security management. Also, with the introduction of multimodal biometrics, the market is expected to touch new heights in the coming years.

Health Care, identity theft

Biometrics for patient ID gaining momentum

Biometric technology combats medical identity theft (Business Week)

Data breaches at hospitals may cost the U.S. health-care industry as much as $7 billion a year, according to the Ponemon Institute, a Michigan-based organization that studies privacy, data protection, and security. And that doesn’t count the unknown cost of fraudulent use of information from lost or stolen insurance cards and drivers licenses. HCA Holdings (HCA) hospitals in London and many U.S. providers have a solution: using biometric technology to verify patient identities. “If you don’t have a good way of authenticating legitimate users,” says Ponemon Chairman Larry Ponemon, “whatever you do on the other side isn’t going to be good enough.”

Biometric devices that recognize people’s physical traits—think iris scanners or palm vein readers—are no longer the stuff of spy movies or border control.

access control, cloud, face, logical, voice

Biometric authentication for cloud storage

Intel’s McAfee brings biometric authentication to cloud storage (Computer World UK)

Intel is introducing new ideas to secure the public cloud, offering a service in which online files can be accessed after users are verified by an authentication scheme including face and voice recognition.

McAfee, a unit of Intel, is adding a product called LiveSafe that will offer 1GB of online storage that can be accessed through biometric authentication. LiveSafe has a Web-based management dashboard, and users can be authenticated through face recognition, voice or by punching in a PIN. LiveSafe also includes antivirus and other security features.

face, immigration, politics, US

‘Wired’ drops biometric fly into Senate’s immigration ointment

Wired threw the double whammy of “Biometric” and “National ID” into the middle of the Senate and national debate on overhauling the U.S. immigration system.

The article that touched it all this off is:

Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform (Wired)

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Organs on both sides of the American political scene — the left-leaning Daily Beast and the right-leaning Daily Caller — found the Wired piece wanting.

The Immigration Bill does not create a ‘biometric database of all adult Americans’ (Daily Beast)

The idea of the government creating a massive biometric database for virtually all adult Americans is indeed terrifying, and if the story was true, would be cause for genuine outrage

Fortunately, Wired’s assertion is false. Here are the facts: [ed. article continues]

‘Wired’s attack on immigration reform gets biometrics wrong (Daily Caller) 

Any E-Verify system that could actually prevent fraud will necessarily be more intrusive than the current system. In this case, an effort is being made to guarantee job applicants actually are who they say they are — that they are not merely stealing someone else’s social security number.

This is not to say we shouldn’t be vigilant in regards to protecting our civil liberties. There is a natural tension at play as immigration reformers work to create a system that actually prevents the employment of illegals who wish to skirt the law.

Both articles also run with a novel (to me) argument, potentially from the same source, that a face photo isn’t really biometric in nature.

Daily Beast:

That isn’t a “biometric” data set by any reasonable definition. As a Senate aide told me: [ed. cont’d]

Daily Caller:

There is also a semantics problem with the Wired story; photographs, I am told, don’t technically qualify as “biometrics.” 

That will come as quite a shock to many people who have been developing facial recognition algorithms for a decade or more and the thousands of people who use facial recognition technologies already. If drivers license-style photos of faces aren’t reasonably good proxies for unique identifiers, why do photo ID’s exist in the first place?

UPDATE:
David Bier writing at OpenMarket.org provides valuable commentary in Sorry, Daily Beast: E-Verify Will Be National ID.

This bit reinforces the point we made above:

Never mind how experts or the general public use the word, the phrase biometric identification has a specific legal definition. Under 46 USC 70123, “the term “biometric identification” means use of fingerprint and digital photography images and facial and iris scan technology and any other technology considered applicable by the Department of Homeland Security.” In other words, the government itself defines photographs as biometric identification. [ed. all emphasis and link in orig.]

interoperability, transportation, TWIC

TWIC hasn’t been popular with transportation workers…

…but I get the sense that the transportation workers don’t oppose the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) on principle, rather, implementation just hasn’t worked out. The U.S. General Accounting Office seems to share workers’ assessment.

Scrap TWIC? GAO report slams port credential program (Land Line Magazine)

Truck drivers and others who work at U.S. ports have grumbled for years about the expenses and hassles of obtaining a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC.

TWIC – a biometric security card capable of storing fingerprints, residency documents and other information – was designed to make ports and major warehouse areas less vulnerable to potential terrorists.

A federal investigative report released this week says the TWIC program’s efforts to implement a remote card reader system haven’t worked, and said Congress should consider scrapping the 10-year-old billion-dollar program altogether and starting over with a new credential.

As we have discussed in other TWIC-related posts, the interoperability issues involved in having one card that works at every port, warehouse, transshipment hub, border, etc. haven’t been overcome and the administrative load on those required to carry the card have been heavy.

UPDATE:
See also:
TSA Defends TWIC Reader Program (Homeland Security Today)

“TWIC readers determine whether a card is authentic, valid and issued by TSA,” Sadler testified. “The readers also check that the card has not expired and, by accessing the cancelled card list, can determine if the card has been revoked or reported lost or stolen. When used in the biometric mode, readers confirm through a biometric fingerprint match that the person using the card is the rightful owner of the card. The TWIC card and reader system can perform these checks virtually anywhere with portable or fixed readers because connectivity to an external database is not required. [ed. emphasis mine]“

How does the italicized part work? Without at least intermittent connectivity to an external database how are lost cards to be rejected?

authentication, financial, fingerprint, passwords, payments

PayPal would prefer prints to passwords, PIN’s. But…

…as the article concludes, it’s not necessarily an either/or proposition.

Online financial services providers are looking forward to a future where they are less reliant on password technology for authenticating their customers’ identities on line and they seem to have very open minds re biometrics. But can biometrics supplant the password altogether?

PayPal wants to get rid of passwords in favor of biometric security (SlashGear)

However, he [ed. PayPal chief information security officer Michael Barrett] noted that passwords simply won’t go away after biometrics are introduced. It’ll certainly take a while before a new standard can completely take over, especially considering that passwords have been the standard for so many years. So while we could see smartphones with integrated fingerprint scanners, it could be a few years before a new security standard takes over full-time.

Biometrics can be used to overcome some of the limitations of passwords in use cases important to PayPal.

A biometric template is like a really long password your body makes — the example below uses 800 hexadecimal characters — in that sense biometrics allow for more complex passwords the user doesn’t have to remember or write down.

Nevertheless (and in agreement with the quoted article’s concluding paragraphs), rather than making passwords obsolete, biometrics will most probably be used to return the the password to the simplicity of the PIN era, ending the arms race that has required the use of longer, more complex, and more frequently changing passwords.

Real fingerprint template:
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

forecast, market

Biometric systems market to hit a value of $20 billion by 2018 (Companies and Markets)

Social networking sites are anticipated to begin using biometrics for authentication. The increasing use of mobile/tablet based applications will encourage mobile industry leaders like Apple and Google to implement biometrics in to mobile devices.

The market for fingerprint biometric technologies is expected to see the largest increase with an annual growth rate of 19.6 percent. It is currently the main source of revenues in the biometrics market totalling $2.7 billion and by 2015 it will grow to reach more than $6 billion.

The second largest segment in biometrics, the market for face, iris, vein, and voice recognition technologies, will expand to $3.5 billion, from its current size of roughly $1.4 billion.

development, IMF, World Bank

Emerging ID concensus

The twin pillars of international cooperation on economic and financial order have recently been making positive statements about India’s UID project.

IMF: Direct cash through Aadhaar to save 0.5% of GDP for India (The New Indian Express)

World Bank chief: Aadhaar to help eradicate poverty (Business Standard)

Former Chief of Staff to President Clinton, John Podesta also goes on the record with Casey Dunning for the Guardian:
We can end poverty, but the methods might surprise you

New technologies mean that states can craft their programs to help specifically the most vulnerable populations, and that they can do so efficiently. The widespread use of mobile phones, analytics and biometric technology lets a country implement social safety nets with far greater speed and efficacy than previously imagined. The government of India was able to enroll 200 million people in a national biometric ID effort in less than two years, modernizing a vital system that provides the poorest of the poor with food assistance, education vouchers and job opportunities.

Throw in the Center for Global Development Lecture: Technology to Leapfrog Development, by UID chief Nandan Nilekani, and it looks like an emerging international development consensus is emerging around the idea of “ID as Development.”

Animetrics, data collection, enrollment, face

New technical approaches to facial recognition technology

The Animetrics press release below contains some really interesting information about facial recognition innovation.

Early adopters and potential adopters of facial recognition technology have been pressing hard for improved performance. Animetrics and others have responded by coming up with automated ways to improve the quality of the data processed through to the template generation software for matching. The press release does a very good job of describing Animetrics approach.

Animetrics Unveils ID-Ready, Cloud-Based Facial Biometric System (Animetrics Press Release)

The service takes a grainy, partial view, angulated 2D facial image, applies 2D-to-3D algorithms and corrects the pose of the face, and makes it ID-Ready for most any facial recognition system.

“ID Ready essentially takes a bad image and makes a mugshot out of it,” said Paul Schuepp, chief executive officer of Animetrics.

Most facial recognition systems require photos be a frontal view of a face in order to make a positive match. However, most photos studied by law enforcement are of faces that are rotated, “off pose” and are captured by low resolution video security cameras or long distance telephoto surveillance cameras.

“This type of uncontrolled imagery renders face recognition systems impractical because of the poor matching results, if results occur at all,” says Schuepp.

Here’s how the system works: law enforcement personnel upload a 2D photo to Animetrics servers at id.ready.animetrics.com and the ID Ready system applies facial feature point detection (eyes, nose tip, mouth, etc.) to accurately find the face and specify the parts Fine-tuning is possible by the user positioning three red crosshairs over both eyes and tip of the nose.

From there a 3D model is created and a new 2D resultant image that is pose-corrected to zero for facial pitch, yaw, and roll along the x, y and z axis.

Read further and you’ll discover that the innovation doesn’t stop with the technology. The sales/distribution model is noteworthy, as well.

ID, mobile, multifactor

Biometrics for mobile ID gaining acceptance among telecoms

Mobile biometrics gaining traction, ‘common’ by 2015 (ZDNet)

Tracy Hulver, chief identity strategist at Verizon enterprise solutions, said: “Biometrics, without a doubt, will become more prevalent as a component or add-on to mobile devices in the coming years.”

Proving people are who they say they are has been a challenge for digital security since computers have been in use, according to Hulver. Biometrics, he added, provided a “multifactor” authentication scheme: pairing “something you know” such as a user ID and password combination, with “something you are”.

She ought to know what she’s talking about.

android, fingerprint, google, hardware, SecuGen

The Hamdroid

…or maybe it’s the Andster. At any rate, the Android Hamster or Hamster for Android is on it’s way and whatever the marketers decide to go with, the combination of a reliable, affordable, off-the-shelf, USB fingerprint reader and reliable, affordable, off-the-shelf, tablet devices could be a real game changer.

Artwork not endorsed/approved by Google or SecuGen

Now, for around than $150 all in, tinkerers can purchase a staggering array of hardware and operate it on an open platform. I can’t wait to see what people do with that power. Even before this, folks were applying biometrics to more things than any one person could possibly imagine.

The SecuGen Hamster sells for as low as $79.00.
Android tablets are available for as low as $70.00. I saw some sales circulars in the Sunday paper (Wal-Mart & Best Buy) advertising 7 in. tablets with front-facing cameras and Wi-Fi for $69.99.

Secugen releases fingerprint authentication SDK for Android (Biometric Update)

SecuGen has just announced the release of its FDx SDK Pro for Android.

According to the company, this new SDK will allow developers to add fingerprint authentication to their Android-based software on ARM tablets and smart phones using SecuGen’s Hamster IV and Hamster Plus fingerprint readers. This SDK also incorporates SecuGen’s MINEX tested, FIPS 201/PIV complicate template extraction and matching algorithms.

“We are very excited to be able to offer Android compatibility for our fingerprint readers,” Dan Riley, VP of engineering at SecuGen said. “Our partners have been asking for this and our role, as always, is to provide them with the tools that they need. The FDx SDK Pro for Android is one of several exciting new products that we will be bringing to market in 2013.”

UPDATE: Minor edits, added links to hardware, and bumped.