Less common biometrics like finger vein and hand geometry recognition made more top headlines than usual this week, and governments around the world continue to make progress with biometric applications, albeit at widely varying stages and degrees of difficulty. Companies dealing with the threat of potential facial recognition controversy also make up several of our top stories, however.Digital identity and cashless transactions are identified as exciting opportunity for the industry by Precise Biometrics CEO Stefan K. Persson, in a company blog post on his first year leading Precise.
The U.S. Department of Defense is planning to connect its IMESA vetting system to its ABIS by the end of the year, as part of a broader effort to integrate its physical access control system for domestic facilities with more information systems. The Army is also using facial and voice recognition technologies implemented by its C5ISR Center to help overseas intelligence operations vet identities and identify threats to its missions, FCW reports.
A bit farther off, in multiple senses, the U.S. government is also considering creating a Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA) to detect future mass killers with “a multi-modality solution, along with real-time data analytics,” according to a Gizmodo report. A database of people with mental health issues may be part of the plan, and Fitbit data could reportedly be involved, somehow.
Governments in Ghana and Nigeria have taken steps towards broadening the use of biometrics for government services, while a pair of well-written perspectives from the continent recently provide perspective on specific government issues in African digital identity systems.
The NYPD meanwhile is reported to have used ineligible facial images in its biometric database, and may also be adding people to a DNA database without informing them. That report follows the NYPD’s effective and responsible use of its facial biometric capabilities during a moment of potential crisis in of the widely-read positive stories from last week.
DHS is pushing its biometric border perimeter all the way to South America with an information-sharing program to identify individuals in U.S. and international criminal databases, The Washington Post reports, providing biometric and other equipment as it seeks to control the flow of immigrants and potential terrorists to the U.S.
