BT/ Microsoft and Samsung show work on health biometrics in patent filings

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Paradigm

29 min readMay 10, 2021

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Biometrics biweekly vol. 11, 26th April — 10th May

TL;DR

A patent application from Microsoft describing emotion detection by a biometric health monitoring system based on information gathered by wearables, like blood pressure and heartrate, has been published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 could include health biometric monitoring features, according to speculation by TechRadar based on a patent filing spotted by LetsGoDigital.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted Apple a patent for its method of capturing 3D face biometrics with a hybrid lighting system. Also, Apple patent filing describes improved Face ID biometrics for masked users.
Innovative Technology certified for biometric age verification solutions.
BIO-key issued patent for continuously updated biometric templates.
iBeta expands biometric PAD compliance letter listing to help buyers.
Daon and Innovatrics each ace biometric PAD tests by iBeta.
Jumio face biometrics and liveness selected for real-time Australian identity checks.
Goodix’ multi-biometric sensor developers named finalists for European Inventor Award.
FaceTec’s selfie biometrics have been selected by Veritran to bring 3D face authentication to the latter’s Low-Code Platform solutions for enterprises.
Plurilock files patents extending behavioral biometrics to insider threats, more situations.
New behavioral biometrics FIDO certification, developer tool, customer win revealed.
Privacy advocates, Spotify only see the bad in each other.
Full-stack vehicle biometrics solution launched by SenseTime at Auto Shanghai 2021
Innovatrics SmartFace biometric processing speed reaches 25X faster than real-time
A pair of methods for protecting vein biometrics templates from vulnerability to theft or leakage without degrading recognition performance have been developed by researchers from the Idiap Research Institute.
A new method of foiling deepfake video reportedly has been developed by Army researchers.
Biometric access control updates: Precise Biometrics, Invixium, FPC, Aware, Suprema.
US Army using VR helmets to link biometrics with automated systems.
G20 health pass guidelines urging biometrics investment welcomed by IATA.
BBC explores health pass biometrics with iProov and FinGo.
Telpo urges use of digital ID cards with biometric verification to defeat identity theft.
Fingerprint Cards receives substantial biometric sensor modules order from Sentry Enterprises.
Iris ID biometrics now available on MetaDolce Technologies’ tablet.
NEC and BioRugged provide thermal cameras to fight COVID, a biometric solution launched by WildFaces.
UK to roll out digital health passes via NHS app, Estonia launches VaccineGuard.
Plans for digital birth certificates in Australia underway.
Neurotechnology launches its free biometric verification SDK.
New facial recognition tools and defences for data and privacy protection.
How to stop AI from recognizing your face in selfies.
More than 9 in 10 will consider biometrics and new payment technologies: Mastercard report.
Biometrics industry events. And more!

Biometrics market

The Biometric system market size is projected to grow from USD 36.6 billion in 2020 to USD 68.6 billion by 2025; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13.4% during the forecast period. Increasing use of biometrics in consumer electronic devices for authentication and identification purposes, the growing need for surveillance and security with the heightened threat of terrorist attacks, and the surging adoption of biometric technology in automotive applications are the major factor propelling the growth of the biometric system market.

Biometric Research & Development

Latest Researches:

Idiap researchers develop vein biometric template protection approach with biohashing

A pair of methods for protecting vein biometrics templates from vulnerability to theft or leakage without degrading recognition performance have been developed by a pair of researchers from the Idiap Research Institute.

Sebastien Marcel and Hatesh Otroshi researched the application of deep neural networks for biometric template protection with funding from the TReSPAsS-ETN (for training in secure and privacy-preserving biometrics, early training networks) project of the EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN-European Industrial Doctorate (EID) program.

‘Deep auto-encoding and biohashing for secure finger vein recognition’ was published by the Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, while the more extensive ‘Towards protecting and enhancing vascular biometric recognition methods via biohashing and deep neural networks’ was published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science.

The approach involves protecting vein templates by biohashing deep biometric features. The researchers captured the deep features through “a convolutional auto-encoder neural network with a multi-term loss function.” The dimension of features was reduced with a deep neural network, and then extracted the features with the auto-encoder at the embedding layer.

Otroshi and Marcel believe their proposal to reduce the dimensionality of the vein images with a deep auto-encoder before biohashing is novel in the field.

The former paper proposes an auto-encoder (AE) for feature extraction, and compares the matching performance with the resulting templates in normal scenarios and situations in which the user’s private key (however unlikely in practice) has been leaked against Wide Line Detector (WLD), Repeated Line Tracking (RLT) and Maximum Curvature (MC) feature extraction algorithms with biohashed templates. The second paper tests each of the above extraction algorithms alone, in combination with biohashing, those two methods combined separately with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and with the AE extraction algorithm.

The combined AE-plus-biohash approach yields superior results in the researcher’s simulation to those without the AE in both the normal and stolen scenarios.

Although the research primarily focussed on finger vein biometrics, testing for palm and wrist vein biometrics showed similarly promising results.

New biometric tool spots deepfakes even out on the battlefield

A new method of foiling deepfake video reportedly has been developed by Army researchers.

The system, called DefakeHop, is billed as being lightweight, requiring little training and offering high performance for operating in combat. Army personnel are increasingly put on the ground with sophisticated vision systems that could fall victim to digital attacks.

DefakeHop is a unique tool for processing and understanding face biometrics.

The Army Research Lab collaborated with University of Southern California scientists on the project. Army researcher Suya You was looking for a new way to understand what makes deepfakes so realistic, and, of course to find defenses against them.

The scientists developed “an innovative theory and mathematical framework” called the Successive Subspace Learning (SSL) neural net architecture. SSL architecture consists of multiple transform matrices processed in cascade. The method is expected to overcome the shortcomings of deep-learning media forensics, including scalability, portability and robustness (in terms of adversarial attacks).

The team also developed the FaceHop algorithm based on SSL to improve the performance of biometric gender classification with low image quality.

Researchers will present the method in July at the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo 2021.

Research into making AI safe soars, but is it enough to build trust in algorithms?

An Israeli AI security consulting firm says computer vision is the most vulnerable aspect of artificial intelligence, which as a whole is being attacked with increasing intensity globally.

That insight is part of a self-published report by Adversa that finds a significant increase in research into AI defenses and countermeasures from 2010 to 2020.

The number of government, academic and industry research papers published in the last two years of that period reached 3,500 — more, according to the report, than all the articles published in the previous 20 years.

Assuming some of that surge addresses computer vision vulnerabilities, it could be timely for the sector.

Sixty-five percent of exploits involving AI, Adversa writes, target computer vision. It is no coincidence that vision, which includes facial recognition and other biometrics, is one of the most evolved of AI’s many offspring.

The most hunted AI application is image classification at 43 percent. Second is facial recognition (seven percent). Object detection falls further down, accounting for three percent of attacks.

The next-most targeted applications are analytics (18 percent) and language (13 percent), according to Adversa. Those three arguably are the AI market right now.

There is plenty of worry to spread around, though. The report finds that all 60 of the most common machine learning models are “prone to at least one vulnerability.” (While there is no reason to doubt Adversa’s findings, necessarily, the report is part of the company’s marketing effort. Also, sizable portions of the report are based on “the expert opinions of our team.” More hard statistics would make for a stronger case.)

Hackers are primarily motivated by the desire to manipulate AI behavior. Some, predictably, want to know how algorithms work. Others want to steal data or infect models and datasets.

The industries that are most attractive to criminals right now are cybersecurity, the internet, biometrics, all of which exist with significant or dominant impact from computer vision.

Of datasets, static images are hammered the hardest — 61 percent of attacks. Text datasets is next, at a distant 10 percent, according to the report.

After that comes the long tail of single digits. Of the 11 listed datasets, video ranks last, with two percent of attacks.

Main Development News:

Microsoft and Samsung show work on health biometrics in patent filings

A patent application from Microsoft describing emotion detection by a biometric health monitoring system based on information gathered by wearables, like blood pressure and heartrate, has been published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The idea seems to be to enable companies to run programs to provide their employees with ‘wellness insights’ derived from the biometric data, and extending this to emotion. An employee “anxiety score” could be used to suggest workers take a break by combining biometric data with information generated by Microsoft Office.

Data could be gathered dedicated sensors that gather health biometrics, but also from audio and video meeting streams, haptic sensor feedback, and even the length of time spent on an email, according to the filing for ‘Emotion detection from contextual signals for surfacing wellness insights.’

Computerworld notes an apparent increase in worker burnout during the pandemic. Workplace surveillance fears are arising from the integration of analytics with software tools, but Microsoft has recently introduced both analytics and policy-based tools for measuring productivity and alleviating employee stress.

“Consumers are increasingly familiar and comfortable with the use of wearable devices for collecting biometric data to monitor their health and wellbeing; however, extending these capabilities into the workplace will likely be a cause for concern for employees,” 451 Research Senior Research Analyst Raul Castanon told Computerworld.
“There are many benefits that analytics can provide to employees, including monitoring their health and wellbeing at work and in their personal life, but navigating this area can be extremely delicate for the enterprise.”

The forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 could include health biometric monitoring features, according to speculation by TechRadar based on a patent filing spotted by LetsGoDigital.

Blood pressure and heart rate (ECG) biometrics could be measured through various sensor interactions, including by squeezing the edges the phone between the thumb and finger, as depicted in images labeled ‘Galaxy Z Fold Bioinformation.’ They also show the phone laid across the users has for scans of the palm and fingers, and reading the user’s finger with the device closed against the finger.

The sensors could provide fingerprint biometrics, cholesterol level, aortic pressure, arterial stiffness, stress and fatigue, LetsGoDigital suggests. The data could be displayed on an exposed screen, and exported to the Samsung Health App to be combined with other data and analyzed.

Despite the specific device being referred to the patent document, the biometric system described could be implemented on any foldable mobile device.

Apple granted patent for face biometrics with hybrid illumination

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted Apple a patent for its method of capturing 3D face biometrics with a hybrid lighting system.

The patent for Face ID’s ‘Hybrid mode illumination for facial recognition authentication’ comes after another one the USPTO granted last week, which protects Face ID’s features relying on multi-component vision biometric systems.

The new patent describes methods and systems intended for operating a face biometric authentication process on a device, particularly through the use of flood infrared illumination and patterned illumination.

According to the application, the flood infrared illumination and patterned illumination may be produced by a single illuminator or a combination of illuminators. Flood infrared illumination biometric data may then be generated by analyzing areas in the images between face features in the illuminated pattern. Depth map image data, on the other hand, may be generated by assessing the pattern illuminated on the user’s face in the images.

Both flood infrared illumination data and the depth map image data may be generated separately from the captured images, and then used to authenticate users.

Apple notes that traditionally, devices often separate images captured with different types of illumination to prevent one source of light from affecting the other.

The new technology is described in Apple’s patent 10,990,805, which refers to multiple other patents related to various aspects of Face ID technology.

Innovative Technology certified for biometric age verification solutions

Innovative Technology (ITL) has received recognition from the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) for its ICU face biometric age and identity verification device.

Following the official ACCS recognition, ICU can be now deployed in a Challenge 25 policy area after its face recognition algorithms were deemed at least 98.85 percent reliable in assessing individuals’ age.

“We are delighted to be one of the first providers to receive this robust, impartial certification from ACCS which gives us a seal of approval for our artificial intelligence (AI) powered age verification device,” commented ITL ICU Product Manager Andrew O’Brien.

According to the ACCS test results, ICU underestimates age by only 0.19 years, with a Mean Absolute Error of 1.22 years.

From a technical standpoint, the Age Check Certification Scheme conducts conformity assessment of products, processes, and services following ISO 17065:2013 standards.

In other words, the biometric age test system is checked against multiple verification methods, and an independent benchmark is then provided to the company.

According to a blog post on the company’s website, Innovative Technology will now support the AVPA’s goal to “educate the market about the emergence of new tools for automated age verification.”

AVPA is the global trade body for independent providers of privacy-protecting, age verification technology.

The non-profit represents a number of organizations providing both biometric age verification and age estimation, including AGEify, Experian, and GBG.

Plurilock files patents extending behavioral biometrics to insider threats, more situations

Plurilock has filed a pair of provisional patent applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, expanding the company’s portfolio of continuous biometric authentication technologies.

The filings relate to innovations for detecting insider threats with behavioral biometrics, and enhancing Plurilock’s invisible authentication technology to broaden the use cases it can be implemented for, respectively. The latter is intended to preserve the robustness of invisible authentication in multi-modal and remote work environments, according to a company announcement.

Combined, the company believes the patent applications will enhance its core technologies and give it new ways to enhance the security of Plurilock clients.

“These patents represent our continued investment in R&D to stay on the cutting edge of identity centric solutions for workforces,” states Ian L. Paterson, CEO of Plurilock. “Our customers benefit by using the latest technology, and our partners benefit by being able to offer competitive, innovative solutions that their competitors don’t have.”

BIO-key issued patent for continuously updated biometric templates

A patent has been issued for a continuous process of authenticating people with biometrics. To date, authentication systems have been event-driven, such as by enrollment.

Identity and access management vendor BIO-key International has been awarded U.S. patent 10984085. Algorithms passively and continuously collect biometric datasets that grow over time in degree of completion.

It works on fingerprints, faces and voices to build a full template, according to BIO-key.

A metric of data closeness is created between first and subsequent captures, which can differ in scale. Subsequent images are added to the first one. BIO-key’s detector judges if the comparison shows an alignment of features.

This is useful when data is collected in uncontrolled environments, where a full biometric template has not or cannot be compiled at once and when image resolution is not known.

It also makes the quality of each data sample less important, as details are cumulatively added. That is important as security measures increasingly integrate contactless fingerprint systems. Contactless print scans are lower in detail than scans performed by pressing a finger to a screen or pad. The company also notes in an announcement that the patent method could be beneficially deployed mobile devices with in-screen sensors, and cameras and microphones generating continuous streams of partial biometric samples over time.

The newly-awarded patent brings BIO-key’s IP portfolio to a total of 18 patents for IAM and biometrics.

iBeta expands biometric PAD compliance letter listing to help buyers

iBeta Quality Assurance has expanded the information it lists on its website about compliance testing for biometric presentation attack detection (PAD) standard ISO/IEC 30107–3 in order to assist companies looking to purchase biometric capabilities.

The new table is designed to give potential biometrics customers easy access to important testing details on products tested by iBeta since 2018. It provides information on the specific technology tested for each compliance letter, as well as the false non-match rate (FNMR) and bona fide presentation classification error rate (BPCER) testing limits.

The testing provider emphasizes that compliance confirmation applies only to the specific version of the biometric technology tested, and does not include updates or different versions of similar hardware or software. Customers should therefore consider confirming that the particular biometric technology they are purchasing is the same as the tested version.

Some iBeta clients chose not to disclose their test participation, and therefore their letters are not included on the company’s website. There are 42 biometric products currently listed on iBeta’s directory, with the recent addition of Oz Forensics.

In addition to accreditation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) for biometric testing compliant with ISO/IEC 17025, iBeta is also accredited by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Mastercard, Google /Android, and the FIDO Alliance.

Daon and Innovatrics each ace biometric PAD tests by iBeta

Daon and Innovatrics have each successfully completed independent ISO/IEC 30107–3 biometric presentation attack detection (PAD) testing by iBeta Quality Assurance with a 100 percent success rate at identifying spoof attacks, based on a bona fide classification error rate (BPCER) set at 15 percent.

The level 1 test of Daon’s technology shows the compliance of the DaonFace 5.1.0.28 server to the ISO standard.

Innovatrics’ Digital Onboarding Toolkit (DOT), version 4.0 for Android and 2.2 for iOS, was confirmed compliant with level 2 of the PAD standard.

iBeta has been taking steps to enhance the transparency of its testing, and to improve market understanding of what it means.

Privacy advocates, Spotify only see the bad in each other

When Spotify was awarded a patent in January for a biometric system that listens in on people listening to Spotify, privacy advocates and musicians drew a line.

Their choices can be endlessly and anonymously analyzed and commoditized, but no one should be able to analyze the sounds made while they enjoyed their Spotify account. It would be a little too much like someone could read their minds, or that they could never be alone.

Spotify executives said last month that they do not intend to ever use the system, and it is common for inventors to seek a patent for something they think they will never use. It is just an asset — intellectual property.

Of course, everybody knows a company can be purchased by anyone, and that buyer might have other ideas for a patent. Or the company winning a patent could sell, lease or give away the patent to someone who will commercialize the research.

That is why 180 people, including musicians and activists, have signed an open letter demanding that Spotify essentially put the biometrics patent in a safe, preferably one on a ship sinking in the Atlantic Ocean on a winter night.

Goodix’ multi-biometric sensor developers named finalists for European Inventor Award

A pair of researchers with Goodix have been named finalists for the European Inventor Award 2021 for their innovation combining fingerprint and blood flow biometrics for device access control.

The European Patent Office announced that Bo Pi and Yi He have been named as finalists in the ‘Non-EPO countries’ category for their invention, which protects against biometric spoof attacks.

Goodix chose Pi and He to lead its live authentication research and development department back in 2013, when they started working on preventing spoof attacks. Pi is an experienced electrical engineer, and He is a former professor of optoelectronics. They noticed that infrared light could be used to measure heartbeats, and hypothesized that the capability could be used to measure the blood-flow of a finger placed on a biometric sensor. He developed an optical fingerprint sensor module and matching software to capture the dual biometrics, and the two-factor authentication method has been proven useful against spoof attacks, according to the announcement.

Innovatrics SmartFace biometric processing speed reaches 25X faster than real-time

Innovatrics’ face biometrics platform is now capable of processing video 25 times faster than it would take to watch the it, the company says.

The faster than real-time processing capability of Innovatrics’ SmartFace Platform can accelerate post-event investigations and biometric identification, and make the technology useful for highly time sensitive applications. Traditional methods of video footage review are not only time-consuming and laborious, the company argues, but any review system that would take several hours to review camera footage from around an amusement park in the event of a missing child will not be of practical use.

Full-stack vehicle biometrics solution launched by SenseTime at Auto Shanghai 2021

SenseTime has unveiled a new, full-stack biometric and AI solution at Auto Shanghai 2021, an international industry exhibition running during April 19 to 28.

Dubbed SenseAuto, the system incorporates a number of the company’s solutions designed to provide smart driver assistance via computer vision and biometric sensors.

These include the Sense Auto Cabin-O Occupant Monitoring System (OMS), the SenseAuto Cabin-D Driver Monitoring System (DMS), and the SenseAuto Cabin-K Keyless Entry, together with the Virtual Companion and multiple in-vehicle infotainments (IVI) functions powered by augmented reality (AR).

SenseAuto was unveiled at the Auto Shanghai event in a WEY Mocha vehicle, a new SUV from Great Wall Motors.

Thanks to the solution’s multiple biometric sensors, the car is capable of triggering timely alerts via gaze tracking when recognizing signs of dangerous driving like drowsiness, distraction, and phone use.

US Army using VR helmet to link biometrics with automated systems

The United States Army is using a new suite of biometric software tools as it works towards using the data to provide situational awareness to automated systems like drones, Federal News Network reports.

The Army Research Lab and Navy are using software that tracks a range of data including pupil size, eye movement, heart rate and breathing patterns, according to the report. Pupil size could be used to sense focus on a particular area, and mark it out for automated investigation. Heart rate biometrics could be used to sense when a soldier is in danger.

“The future squad is not just going to be humans,” Army Research Lab Scientist Russell Cohen Hoffing tells Federal News Network. “There’s going to be agents involved — robots, some intelligent adaptive systems, drones, software. Our systems will passively look at physiology of soldiers and use that to create a map to paint a picture of situational awareness. You could have a drone immediately infer where a soldier is interested and go and explore that area, and this is again having all passively without a soldier’s input at all.”

At this point, the ARL is trying to figure out how the data can be associated with soldiers’ needs. That research currently involves soldiers wearing Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) virtual reality goggles, and having their biometrics gathered during field scenarios.

The Army began testing biometric authentication on the IVAS last year, and is continuing to work on ways to give personnel biometric sensors that are easy to wear.

Neurotechnology launches its free biometric verification SDK

Neurotechnology has unveiled its downloadable Free Fingerprint Verification Software Development Kit (FFV SDK) which it says is suitable for developing biometric logon applications.

Neurotechnology said the FFV SDK is designed with similar biometric technology as its VeriFinger SDK, with the difference that the former does not allow for the development of applications that read fingerprint images from files or perform 1-to-many fingerprint identification.

FFV SDK only helps in developing applications that can verify a fingerprint on a 1-to-1 matching basis, comparing a scanned fingerprint against a previously stored one, the company notes.

The FFV SDK can also be used for other biometric applications on which more than ten captured fingerprints cannot be stored.

The FFV SDK is a freeware that supports live scanned fingerprint inputs, has all three components as the VeriFinger SDK and runs on one of six operating systems VeriFinger supports. The FFV SDK however runs on Windows 7, 8 and 10 operating systems, the article notes.

FaceTec partners with Veritran

FaceTec’s selfie biometrics have been selected by Veritran to bring 3D face authentication to the latter’s Low-Code Platform solutions for enterprises.

Veritran is integrating FaceTec’s biometric technology into its security suite to add a new layer of protection for the millions of transactions carried out daily on its platform. Veritran clients can use 3D face biometrics for remote onboarding, logins, and authentication for payments and transfers. FaceTec’s software can also be integrated with third-party systems to harmonize data encryption and anti-fraud tools.

“We are very excited to expand our global footprint by partnering with Veritran to bring our industry-leading biometric offerings to a new segment of end-users,” says Kevin Alan Tussy, CEO at FaceTec. “Protecting end-users from ever-evolving cyber threats and providing technological advances to improve the user experience will make it safer and easier to conduct in-app and digital transactions.”

FaceTec’s Liveness feature provides real-time identity verification with a biometric match against a photo ID document, and enrolls the submitted image for future verifications.

ZenGo, which uses FaceTec biometrics, has completed a $20 million Series A funding round as it seeks a dominant position in the crypto wallet market. The company processed more transactions in the first quarter of 2021 than all of 2020.

FaceTec’s technology is used by ZenGo customers for account security and restoration.

New facial recognition tools and defences for data and privacy protection

Several new tools have been developed to help consumers protect their privacy or data, either from or with facial recognition technology.

An app called DoNotPay, which charges $3 a month to take care of automated tasks like contesting parking tickets and cancelling free trials, has added a feature it calls ‘Photo Ninja,’ Input reports, which it says can render images unmatchable by facial recognition.

It does this through a combination of AI enhancement techniques like steganography, detection perturbation, and visible overlays.

TechCrunch Security Editor Zack Whittaker says on Twitter that the tool did not work when he tried it with Amazon Rekognition.

Waldo Photos, meanwhile, has been issued a patent for a tool that uses face biometrics to protect copyright on mobile proofs provided by professional photographers, according to a company announcement.

The platform’s FaceBlocker feature recognizes the face of potential purchasers and blocks their faces with a Waldo logo to prevent the image from being stolen with a screenshot.

Waldo says its platform is used by professional photographers for images from gymnastics meets, beaty pageants and schools, and the company says many of its early adopters have doubled their sales.

Private messaging service smashes crowdfunding goal

Yeo Messaging service, which uses continuous authentication through face biometrics to shield messages on the platform from unintended viewers, has raised £768,688 (just over US$1 million), or 157 percent of its target in a crowdfunding effort.

The messaging company says its continuous facial authentication technology is patent-protected. Other privacy-protection features offered by Yeo include geofencing and a ‘Burn After Reading’ tool. The service will be marketed to regulated industries like healthcare and fintech, with 4 versions of its app, including Pro, Business, and Enterprise, running on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model.

The company is offering investors equity at a pre-money valuation of £10.1 million ($14 million).

ICLR highlights facial recognition-blockers

A review of the new biometric application area by MIT Technology Review notes that this week’s International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) shows their increasing prominence.

LowKey, an adversarial AI-based tool, will be presented at ICLR.

Another tool, developed by researchers from Australia and China, seeks to introduce errors into images that prevent deep learning models from processing them with error-minimizing noise.

Predecessor software Fawkes has now been downloaded almost 500,000 times, and has been adapted into a web service by a third party.

In self-testing, Fawkes defeated 100 percent of attempted matches by cloud-based face biometrics algorithms, while LowKey’s developers found it reduced Rekognition and Microsoft Azure matches to below 1 percent.

NEC and BioRugged provide thermal cameras to fight COVID, biometric solution launched by WildFaces

NEC partners on deployment to Kenyan refugee settlement

A collaboration by NEC Corporation, NEC XON, the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat) and Japanese non-governmental organization working on emergency disaster response, Peace Winds Japan, has seen the provision of a thermography camera to help check the spread of COVID-19 in a local settlement in Kenya.

The camera is meant to monitor the body surface temperatures of inhabitants of the Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement in Turkana County in order to detect high fevers and help prevent the propagation of COVID-19 or other infectious diseases, a news release from NEC states. If a person has a high temperature, further steps are taken to handle the situation.

This also comes as activities which had been shut down at some facilities of the settlement and the district as a whole are beginning to reopen.

BioRugged donates thermal scanners to SA primary school

As part of efforts to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and within the framework of its education support program, BioRugged has donated new thermal guns to the Bonwelong Primary School in South Africa.

The new thermal guns come as a relief as the establishment is said to have gone through severe difficulties following a breakdown of many of its thermal guns, according to a LinkedIn post by the biometric solutions-maker.

WildFaces develops system for fever scans in crowds

WildFaces has developed a biometric vision-based artificial intelligence software solution capable of identifying a person with a fever from a crowd.

The company said in an announcement that the tool, dubbed the IQ-FeverCheck, is built in its IQ-Anti-Contagion Suite. It can detect elevated body temperature with an automatic thermal scan and facial recognition technology.

IQ-FeverCheck is flexible and works well with almost all camera systems for recognition, is compatible with the mobile phone’s camera system, drones, body-worn cameras, and much more, WildFaces said.

The system comes with the IQ-Social Distancing feature which gives an alert when social distancing is not respected in a crowd, and the iQ-PPE configurable feature which can identify people who are not wearing masks in a gathering.

EU parliament pulls down Hikvision fever cameras

Fever detection cameras from Hikvision installed around the premises of the European Parliament have been removed following a recent vote by the legislative body of the European Union.

The Hikvision cameras were installed in 2020 in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and the purpose was to screen those entering the premises for high fever, IPVM reports.

The move, fronted by Dutch lawmaker Lara Wolters, passed with the proposed amendment with support from 89.4 percent of Members of the European Parliament (MEP).

The removal was prompted by concerns raised by Wolters about the involvement of Hikvision in rights abuses in China including accusations of Hikvision supplying surveillance equipment to camps detaining Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region.