By Chris Burt
Biometric Update’s most-read stories this week are about aviation sector investments in biometrics, and digital health passes adoption as air travel slowly returns to pre-pandemic levels. Ada Lovelace Institute and Telos ID executives provide advice on recovery efforts. Yinda Infocomm continues its own biometrics investment, pumping in $8 million to Tech5.
Top biometrics stories of the week
DoD Biometrics project manager Colonel Senodja “Frank” Sundiata-Walker shared an in-depth explanation about what U.S. Defense has been working on in biometrics at a recent Security Industry Association meeting. Discussions included the state of the work on multimodal fusion matching, giving troops more information about their opponents in the field, and the growing interest of the DoD in voice-biometrics.
In Brazil, a court decision has blocked the launch of a biometric system for a major public transportation system. Privacy advocates had pushed for transparency in the case against the second, and provided an opinion as an expert witness.
Rob Watts, CEO of Corsight AI, writes in a Forbes Technology Council article that the effectiveness for facial recognition even with masked face has improved rapidly over the last year. The ethical implementation of an algorithm requires more than just selecting a good one. It also requires “research and discernment”, throughout the deployment, usage and maintenance processes.
Tech5 has received another $8 million investment from Yinda Infocomm. This comes shortly after a $2.5million commitment. Tech5 is continuing its expansion efforts in Asia-Pacific. The company plans to use some of the money for research and development, and to increase brand awareness for its face biometrics, fingerprints and iris biometrics.
Sven Bockler, Head of Marketing at Dermalog, tells BiometricUpdate in a sponsored article that the company focused on user-friendliness as well as cost-efficiency when developing its Iris Face Temperature Camera. This focus led to a camera that had a larger detection surface than other similar cameras and high biometric accuracy for iris and multimodal recognition.
In Korea, a bank has launched a push to biometric digital identification for an application that is specific to air travel. Palm vein enrollment can be done in branches, and boarding can be done via a mobile application. This is one of many new deployments within the sector. A $400 million investment by an airport in Guyana in screening technology, as well as the latest Simplified Arrival deployment, have been announced. Telos ID has called for sectorial agreement on the term “digital identity.”
Steven Furnell, senior IEEE member and University of Nottingham Cybersecurity professor, discusses whether or not the adoption of biometric technology has stalled in an IT Pro podcast. The discussion covers consumer and enterprise biometrics as well as how multi-factor authenticates really work and where technology is headed. Furnell’s frequent response to the IT Pro hosts, “it depends on how you implement them,” may be indicative of current public awareness of biometrics.
PhilSys cards are now being distributed as part of the country’s public education campaign in preparation for their use across a variety of services. The launch of the online sign-up for the Philippines’ digital ID system has boosted registrations, but users will still have to register their biometrics at a later time.
The market for remote identification verification using selfie biometrics is maturing, both on the regulatory and product side. The Swiss financial regulatory has approved chip-scanning of biometric identity documents. Verify 365 launched NFC document scans, iDenfy unveiled an algorithm for IP address screening, and Basis ID announced a win.
IATA’s Travel Pass will also trial NFC scanning on flights between Japan & the United States. A SITA executive highlighted the importance of health data to the sector. Hawaii also added semi-anonymous NEC face biometrics to its health screening process at State airports.
In a new report, the Ada Lovelace Institute recommends trust and clarity when it comes to digital health passes or at least a vaccine passport variant. One of the six recommendations is also devoted to the design of the system. The report warns that saving life and protecting privacy are not mutually exclusive.
Vice suggests that the money pumped by the federal government into the U.S. educational system for COVID recovery created a lucrative target market for tech firms hawking video surveillance solutions, which include facial recognition. The article mentions a few companies that are vying for this market and cites an academic study indicating that over-surveillance can negatively impact educational outcomes.
KXAN, a NBC Austin affiliate, examines the fraud deluge that has cost Texas $893 millions. ID.me, a company contracted by the Texas Workforce Commission, was hired to deal with the backlog of fraud claims that has been created since the pandemic began. Oddly, U.S. Justice Department stats present the Dark Web as a single cybercriminal network.
In the UK, a new Online Security Bill has approved biometric-based age checks to enforce age minimums on online content. Children under the age of 12 and even up to 16 years old in some cases could be blocked. Social media companies claim that the measures will increase inequality.
A new study suggests that deepfake detection could be hindered due to the same problem of skewed data sets that plagues many other computer vision applications and biometrics. Researchers found that deepfake detection had error rates up to 10.7 percent higher for different genders and races. Deepfake detectors worked best with white male faces.
Jannis Priesnitz, a researcher at the EAB, presented the state-of-the-art in touchless 2D biometrics in a live online presentation. Priesnitz spoke about techniques to improve and evaluate image quality and the challenge of making touchscreen systems compatible with touchless systems.
Todd Mozer, Chairman and CEO of Sensory, joins the Tech Entrepreneur on A Mission podcast to discuss the evolution of neural network technology and how to build a profitable business. He explains the company’s vision to change the way people interact digital devices around them, which led to early profits, and some of advantages of being a smaller company, especially in the tech sector.
The post Airport biometrics and Health Pass adoption grow as the sector reopens first appeared on Fintech News.