Biometric tests to identify rebels in Afghanistan

London Times | Nov 15, 2009

by Stephen Grey

THE inhabitants of combat zones in southern Afghanistan may face biometric tests in a new initiative to prevent the Taliban from infiltrating villages.

After studying counter-insurgency methods employed from the Boer war to the conflict in Iraq, British commanders are drawing up plans for “gated communities” from which the enemy can be excluded by identity checks. The checks may involve fingerprints, retina scans or even DNA tests.

Brigadier James Cowan, the new commander of British forces in Afghanistan, revealed last week how far the campaign in Helmand is being rethought.

“In counter-insurgency you are not here to beat the enemy. You are here to win the people — because the enemy will always be able to regenerate,” he said in the first newspaper interview he has given in his new role. “What you have to be able to do is give people the security they crave.”

The shift in emphasis from killing Taliban fighters to counter-insurgency has often been misleadingly presented as simply trying to win “hearts and minds” — perhaps with crude bribes such as building wells or health clinics, or through short-term job creation.

At the heart of the strategy favoured by General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces, is a plan to put security for local people above all else. This scheme, which is shaping British intentions, involves not only “soft” incentives but also harder security measures that may prove controversial.

Already used by the Americans to pacify the Iraqi city of Falluja, biometric testing can be combined with physical security measures to control access to an area that has been cleared of insurgents.

When information on the entire population inside such an area is held, outsiders can be identified quickly. In the Iraqi port of Basra, American soldiers on patrol have been issued with iPods that store a database of local people.

Cowan revealed that some fingerprinting had already begun in Helmand. “What we are trying to show people is that this is for their own interests. They’re not to be afraid of this,” he said.

His “long-term aspiration”, he added, was that everyone would be tested. “It gives the Afghan people the confidence to know that we understand when we are dealing with innocent people or guilty people.”

Attempting to establish gated communities would also involve putting up barriers to control access to secured areas. Past counter-insurgency campaigns have included ringing “secure hamlets” in Vietnam with barbed wire and mass forced migration into secure areas during the Malayan campaign.

Such draconian measures could be counter-productive in Afghanistan. One idea is to control access to towns and villages in Helmand by using the canal crossings. “The canals give you a man-made means of breaking up ground and using it to our advantage,” Cowan said.

For the brigadier it is all about challenging the Taliban’s rule of fear: “What you have to do is create communities where people wish to be separate from the enemy because they have the confidence to be separate from them.”

Cowan’s staff have embarked on a huge exercise known as “human terrain mapping”. It involves not only delineating tribal boundaries, but also family networks, land ownership and all the possible grievances that can be exploited by the Taliban.

Strange poll results and data security

bigbrotherwatch.org.uk | Oct 21, 2009

By Dylan Sharpe

There have been a few stories dotted around the media this morning linking to a poll conducted by IT company, Unisys.

The top line to come out of the research is that 75% of Britons do not trust the government to keep their data safe – a statistic that leaves you wondering who the other 25% of people asked were.

Indeed, data loss by government departments over the past 10 years has reached chronic levels and is a major weapon in the armoury of anti-database campaigners like ourselves.

However, as reported elsewhere, other results from the polling revealed that a surprising 56% of respondents were prepared to hand over biometric information to retailers and other institutions as a means of verification; including around 90% being ok with using fingerprint or iris recognition.

These statistics become more dubious when 64% of those surveyed admitted they didn’t have faith in private companies to look after their personal information and 83% were apparently worried about the unauthorised accessing of personal information.

Without seeing the polling questions I don’t want to be overly definitive in my response; but I feel that if the public are clearly worried about public and private bodies holding onto their personal information as demonstrated by the polling results, headlines such as ‘UK ready and willing for biometric fingerprinting’ might have jumped the gun somewhat.

A fingerprint is more precious than a pin number – we mustn’t be tricked into giving away our biometric data under false pretences.

Machines with hand and iris recognition technology are to be deployed at entry points of east London Olympic Park site

AFP | Oct 10, 2009

LONDON — Workers on London’s Olympic Park will have to go through biometric scanning to access the 2012 Games site in a bid to protect it from terrorists, a newspaper reported Sunday.

From this week, machines that have hand and iris recognition technology will be deployed at entry points around the 2.5-square-kilometre east London site, The Observer said.

The weekly said the hand scanners could check up to 5,000 workers per hour at Europe’s largest regeneration project, while the iris scanners would be used as an alternative if required.

The decision to implement the measures was based on Britain’s “years of experience in both tackling terrorism and hosting major sporting and cultural events”, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said.

“Ensuring the construction phase of the Games is safe and secure is a key part of our preparations for London 2012.

“We are using cutting-edge technology to make sure that as activity on the site increases the workforce and infrastructure continue to be protected without affecting progress.”

Around 4,500 people work at the site but the figure is expected to double by the end of next year, The Observer said.

The scanners will also help clamp down on illegal labour.

Government figures found that 136 suspected illegal immigrants were arrested at the site between April and December last year, the latest period for which figures are available.

“We are phasing in robust plans to ensure the security and safety of both the Olympic Park workforce and the surrounding communities,” said a spokesman for the Olympic Delivery Agency.

“Enhanced access controls utilising the latest technology will enable properly authorised, equipped and trained workers to enter and leave the Olympic Park as quickly and safely as possible.”

BBC | Oct 2, 2009

By Michael Fitzpatrick

Increasingly facial recognition is picking out people in a crowd

A surveillance state, with cameras on every street is commonplace but now Big Business is also turning to Big Brother.

Face recognition, behaviour analysing surveillance cameras, biometric profiling and the monitoring and storing of our shopping patterns has made snooping into our habits, movements and private lives ever easier.

Dismayed at its shrinking power to market to us via traditional media or even the internet, the private sector is now proposing to reach potential customers in ways that critics say should have us all concerned.

“There is an enormous pent-up demand for personalised location advertising, whether it is on your cellphone or PDA, on your radio in your car, or on the billboards you walk by on the streets and inside stores,” says Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer of BT.

“This is yet another technological intrusion into privacy. And like all such intrusions, it will be taken as far as the owner of that intrusion finds it profitable.”

Emotional reactions

New surveillance technology could even evaporate the advertiser’s favourite grouse that “half of advertising is wasted, but we don’t know which half”.

Advertisers are turning to “intelligent” digital billboards that use cameras to watch you watching the ads.

In Germany, developers have placed video cameras into street advertisements attempting to discern people’s emotional reactions to the ads, according to the Washington-based privacy advocate outfit the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

It warns that this type of surveillance encroaches on civil liberties. Such face, voice and behaviour technology could be a means of tracking individuals on a mass level across their entire lives, it says.

Pushed by the demands of advertisers and security-minded governments, these technologies are becoming so increasingly smart and intrusive that they now resemble something out of science fiction, it warns.

Science fact

Some of the technology available now seems to have overtaken fiction.

When an interactive ad shouts out to Tom Cruise’s character in the 2002 film Minority Report: “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness!” It identified him as he walked through a mall by scanning the unique pattern of his iris.

This is now pretty standard. Face recognition technology is proving to be a handier, more sophisticated tool to pick us out on the street, a crowded room or at passport control.

Such systems are able to automatically detect and identify human faces using recognition algorithms.

The first step for a facial recognition system is to recognise a human face and extract it from the rest of the scene. Next, the system measures the distance between the features — a distinctive aspect of our faces that does not change with disguises or even surgery.

Matches can then be found in databases in under a second, although 100% accuracy is not yet guaranteed.

Currently the private sector is finding such systems useful for what it calls “targeted marketing,” or “dynamic advertising.”

Japan’s NEC, for instance, sells face-recognition technology to allow advertisers to tailor what ad is showing on a digitised screen depending on the viewer’s sex and age.

Tracking systems, such as these, can determine the viewer’s gender 85-90% of the time, approximate age and ethnicity, and change the ads accordingly.

NEC denies the system raises privacy concerns as it does not store any images, only the analysed results (age and sex) based on those images.

But as Schneier points out systems like these are likely liable to “function creep” where a technology is brought in for one purpose, to profile your sex while viewing an ad for example, and then begins to push the boundaries.

“Once the cameras are installed and operational, once they’re networked to central computers, then it’s a simple matter of upgrading the software,” he says.

“And if they can do more — if they can provide more “value” to the advertisers — then of course they will. To think otherwise is simply naive.”

And when advertisers start to follow us, our privacy, our right to be left alone will be severely compromised, he thinks.

More control

Democratic governments, charged with protecting us from such violations, are beginning to wake up to these practices.

The US is about to propose a bill to ensure that consumers know what information is being collected about them. The EU promises to rigorously police what it claims are already stringent controls on our personal data.

“Europeans must have the right to control how their personal information is used,” Viviane Reding, the EU’s commissioner for information society and media told BBC news. “We cannot give up this basic principle, and have all our exchanges monitored, surveyed and stored, in exchange for a promise of ‘more relevant’ advertising.”

Despite such assurances, given the pervasiveness of such technologies firstly on the internet and now spreading to the physical world, what we do about them in the next few years will be crucial. It might control our privacy for generations to come say human rights advocates.

“Companies are increasingly impatient to get to us and once these practices are commonplace it will hard to reverse them,” says Marc Rotenberg director of EPIC. “Particularly as, ironically, we lose privacy these companies are gaining secrecy.”

It would seem sensible to debate now how far business and the state should be allowed to tag us while we still have a privacy to protect.

digitaljournal.com | Sep 2, 2009

By Kevin Jess

Augmented reality is heading our way, and this new generation of software has the potential to change our lives and how we view the world around us.

Computer graphics have become much more sophisticated since Pong entered the arcades and our homes in the early 1970’s. Since then, computer graphics have steadily improved and have become very realistic and soon they will become very real.

Imagine computer generated graphics being integrated and applied to the real world as you are walking down the street.

For instance, you might be on vacation in Halifax, Nova Scotia and while on a walking tour you stop in front of Government House. You want to know more about it, such as what it is used for and it’s history.

Today we would use our guide book that we picked up at a local tourist information center. With augmented reality applications you wouldn’t need these soon to be relics.

Instead, you would use your cell phone. By focusing your camera phone on Government House you would see all of this information on screen, clicking on links for more information, or quickly accessing a map.

The idea isn’t new, but with the latest generation of mobile phones, many of which have a compass and GPS, 3G mobile internet access and a growing range of mobile applications, there is nothing to stop augmented reality from entering the mainstream.

Google’s Android phones can already use some of the best augmented reality applications. One of those now available is Wikitude, which overlays what you are looking at with information about points of interest based on where the user points the phone’s camera. Simply by activating the phone’s camera mode and then panning it across buildings and locations, Wikitude pulls in information based on where you are located.

The technology even works with people. A Swedish company is working on an application called Augmented ID, which puts facial recognition and photo tagging together to provide personal information. You could use your phone’s camera to frame someone’s face in order to bring up details of their social networking profiles, their business card, or even a criminal record such as a sex offender reports the Telegraph.

Augmented reality displays, one of which is a cell phone will eventually look like a normal pair of glasses,or even contact lenses, where informative graphics will appear in your field of view, and audio will coincide with whatever you see. Graphics, audio and other sense enhancements would, in fact be superimposed over what you are looking at in the real world, in real time reports HowStuffWorks.

Toymakers are also getting in on the action. Mattel is building the technology into a line of action figures to tie in with Avatar, the upcoming 3D film directed by James Cameron. Each toy will come with an iTag; a small plastic card that children can hold up to their web cam. When the computer recognizes the card, a three-dimensional image is superimposed over the card on the computer screen, giving the child information about their action figure’s character and even the ability to “manipulate” the character or vehicle on-screen by pushing virtual “buttons”.

Other applications now available are Twittaround, Traffic Views, Layar and Nearest Tube.

_________

Related

Future of the Screen: Terminator-Style Augmented-Reality Glasses

Indian railway workers unload freight from a train at the New Delhi Railway station in New Delhi

AFP | Sep 2, 2009

NEW DELHI — The Indian government on Tuesday launched a campaign to end notoriously slack time-keeping among its millions of civil servants by introducing biometric scanners at offices in the capital New Delhi.

Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram arrived punctually at work to kick off the drive to improve efficiency within India’s vast bureaucracy, which has a reputation for endless delays and reams of duplicated paperwork.

India’s central government employs about three million civil servants — including all railway workers — while federal states employ about another seven million.

“This is a message to the whole country that everyone must do his work for the allotted hours,” Chidambaram told reporters.

“I understand flexi time, we will introduce some flexibility. Flexibility is if you come 10 or 15 minutes late, you have to work for another 10 or 15 minutes.”

In the first stage of the scheme, 5,000 home ministry employees — regardless of rank — will have their index fingers scanned to register the time they arrive and leave work.

Any employee who is late three times in a month will have to give up a day-off.

A home ministry official said that Chidambaram, a veteran politician, had always been punctual and was “very particular about officials arriving on time.”

singularityhub.com | Aug 24, 2009

by Aaron Saenz

The day has arrived where all the money in the world is at your finger tips. Or rather, all the money in your credit card is in your finger veins. Biometric scanners are popping up everywhere, and now Hitachi has debuted the first vending machine that will accept a finger scan instead of cash or coins. By linking the scan to a credit card account, customers can simply place their finger in the machine and purchase whichever snack goods they desire most. It’s probably the best reward you’ll ever get for giving a vending machine the finger.

The biometric sensor in Hitachi’s new vending machine uses light to scan and read the number and orientation of veins in your finger tip without directly touching a sensor. This provides a unique code for access to a credit card account that has to be established independently of the vending machine. While the machine is only a prototype, and Hitachi hasn’t yet decided whether or not to make a commercial version, the concept itself is more than enough to be causing a buzz. It’s far from the first use of a biometric sensor, but it has the potential to be the most commonly seen application of the technology.

Even if the vending machine industry doesn’t jump on Hitachi’s band wagon, the biometric sales option is ready to be explored. With credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard already providing a “tap and pay” system for cards, consumers may become more confident with payments that don’t require signatures or even human-human interaction. This means that finger scans could very well become a break-out technology. If you’re willing to tap a card, why not just point your finger instead?

Hollywood movies often portray biometrics as added levels of security for very expensive items or collections. Eye scans to enter bank vaults spring readily to mind. The speed of biometric verification, however, makes it just as sensible to go in the other direction. Need to pay $5? Just let the machine count the veins in your index finger. It’s faster than reaching for your wallet. Which may or may not be a good thing. It’s unclear if the hassle of paying for things has a profound affect on the way we spend money. There may be a lot more impulse purchases when you can pay for things by just tapping your finger.

Amazingly, this isn’t the only way that vending machines are getting complex. There are vendors with LCD display and touch screens, and others with conveyor belts or claws instead of those twisting springs. I think that they serve as a good testing ground for emerging commercial technologies. After all, like new high-tech ATMs, they are one of the few public machines that interact with hundreds or thousands of people each day.

With biometrics looking to identify you through your ear, or even your brain, the finger vein technology from Hitachi seems like a more acceptable option. It will be interesting to see if the concept of linking credit cards to a biometric scanner becomes widely popular. Perhaps it will be adopted somewhere else. iTunes? Kindles? Pay toilets?

Digital Journal | Aug 19, 2009

High school students can now pay with their finger

By Andrew Moran

As many high schools across the United States begin the new school year, students can for their lunches with their fingers instead of cash or a student card.

“I’m just really glad I don’t have to remember a number every day or have a card or something. All you have to do is put your finger down and go,” said one 14-year-old high school student. Instead of paying with cash, a pupil can place their index finger on a scanner and be on their way with lunch, according to The Chronicle Telegram.

As of Monday, freshman students can use the lunch account finger-scan but by the end of next week all 2,100 students can access this type of system.

Another 14-year-old high school student was relieved about this finger-scanning system, “As long as there is money in my account, I won’t have to worry about anything. It’s going to make lunch that much easier.”

The school staff will also be using this latest technology.

This biometric system will cost $91,000 and be implemented by Sodexo, who will be hoping that this program will go district-wide and that parents will sign up their students at a high rate in order to recoup their losses.

At the present time there are minor kinks in the system but the general manager of Sodexo, the district’s food service provider, Bill Jett says, “When it’s really up and running it will make things go a lot smoother and faster.”

However, this is not the only amenity that students and faculty can look forward to, according to Principal Darren Conley, “The technology is already out there for us to use biometrics in a number of ways. In the future, we are looking at adding it to the media center for signing materials out or in the classrooms for attendance.”

After the present school year is complete, Elyria High School will be closed and the new building will have an air conditioner, which many people are looking forward to such as a 14-year-old student, “It is so crowded in here that sometimes it’s hard to go up the steps. I can’t wait for the new school to open. We are going to get to experience both the old school and the new school.”

“This is a quintessential national ID system…”

by Jaikumar Vijayan

IDG News Service | Aug 20, 2009

In a move likely to worry opponents of a national ID card, some lawmakers in Congress are proposing that biometrics be used to authenticate the identity of anyone seeking a job in the U.S.

In a move likely to heighten concerns among opponents of a national ID card, some lawmakers are proposing that biometrics be used to authenticate the identity of anyone seeking a job in the U.S.

At a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship, lawmakers from both parties expressed broad support Tuesday for strengthening the E-Verify online employment eligibility verification program with biometrics.

The chairman of the subcommittee, Sen. Charles Schumer, (D-N.Y.), said that E-Verify only checks whether the name, date of birth, citizenship status and other details provided by a job applicant match those in official records from the Social Security Administration and the IRS. The process does little to stop identity thieves and those using identity credentials fraudulently from working illegally in the U.S.

“It is not difficult for illegal workers to scam the system,” because there’s no reliable way check identities, he said.

What is needed is a “tough, fair and effective employment verification system” that relies on the use of a “non-forgeable” biometric identifier, such as fingerprints or palm prints and digital photos, to authenticate the identities of job seekers, he said. Only with such a system is it possible for employers to reliably check the eligibility of new hires, he said.

Schumer’s sentiments were echoed by Sen. John Cornyn, (R-Texas), who also backed the use of “secure, tamper proof” ID cards for employment eligibility verification. Cornyn called the E-Verify system “broken” and said the system needs better direction, legal authority and resources.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, (D-Ill.), urged Congress to ignore “naysayers” opposed to biometric authentication. With adequate security, privacy protections and care, a biometric-based employment verification system is the “only hope” for dealing with illegal employment, he said.

While the lawmakers stressed the need for adequate checks and balances — and a close eye on costs — the proposals are sure to add fuel to the already a contentious debate over the use of E-Verify.

That program, run jointly by the Department of Homeland Security’s Citizen and Immigration Services unit and the Social Security Administration (SSA), is a free Internet-based system that lets employers compare job application information against DHS and SSA data. Starting Sept. 8, federal contracts will be awarded only to employers that use the online E-Verify system to make sure new workers are legally allowed to work in the U.S.

According to the DHS, the SSA database holds some 425 million records, while the DHS immigration databases hold more than 60 million. In most cases, employers get search results in seconds. The system has processed a total of 6 million employee verification requests since last October.

While supporters of the system say it is sorely needed to weed out undocumented workers, critics argue that the program is unreliable. Critics have contended that some information stored in the SSA and DHS databases is flawed or outdated and hasn’t been updated for years. They also contend that people could be deemed ineligible to work in the U.S. due to common misspellings or because of name changes, and note that those with flawed data have little recourse to challenge inaccurate results.

At yesterday’s hearing, for instance, Sen. Russ Feingold, (D-Wis.) said the E-Verify data set is “filled with errors” and has incorrect data on more than 12 million people. If the program were to become mandatory, it would result in at least 600,000 people being incorrectly deemed ineligible to work in the U.S., Feingold said. “That kind of error rate makes the system unworkable,” he said.

Adding a biometric component to the E-Verify program will only will further “invade Americans’ privacy and create a new employment blacklist,” the American Civil Liberties Union warned in testimony submitted to the subcommittee. “From a practical point of view, a biometric system is the worst of both worlds,” ACLU counsel Chris Calabrese wrote. Under the biometric ID system, individuals would need to visit a government agency, provide proof of identity and then have their fingerprint or some other biometric recorded. That biometric would then either be put into a database or on an ID card.

“This is a quintessential national ID system,” Calabrese wrote.

“DMV is not a place where there’s an expectation of privacy of identity.”

securitydirectornews.com | Aug 7, 2009

By Leischen Stelter

RICHMOND, Va.–A number of states throughout the country have implemented some form of facial recognition or biometric technology within their Department of Motor Vehicles and others are preparing to follow suit, said Jason King, spokesperson for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

“State DMVs aren’t just in the business of highway safety,” he said. “They’re now in the identity management business and many are looking to step up their game and improve identity protection mechanisms so folks aren’t committing photo-identity fraud.”  Currently 31 states incorporate biometric or facial recognition technology, King said.

In March, the Virginia DMV instituted a “neutral expression” policy, requiring individuals to refrain from smiling or showing their teeth when taking a photograph for their driver’s license. Melanie Stokes, a spokesperson for the Virginia DMV, said the policy was put in place because the state plans to incorporate facial recognition software into its system in the future. Before the DMV can begin using the technology, the state would need to pass legislation and allocate funding for the program. “We thought it was prudent to begin capturing photos with a neutral expression now in case lawmakers want to use the technology in the future,” she said.

While facial recognition remains a relatively young technology, its growing application in state DMVs helps boost its acceptance by the public, said Stephen Russell, chairman of 3VR Security, a developer of facial recognition technology that does not currently provide software to these state agencies. “DMV is not a place where there’s an expectation of privacy of identity,” he said. “Not only does it protect you as a consumer from ID theft, but anything the DMV can do to stop giving the wrong IDs to someone else has the potential benefit of reducing risk of overall identity fraud.”