BT/ Trio of Apple patent filings describe biometrics innovations for various devices
Biometrics biweekly vol. 49, 26th September — 10th October
TL;DR
- Apple has had a trio of patent applications published that describe biometrics applications on a variety of iDevices
- Microsoft’s Horvitz says it will take more than code to deal with the deepfake threat
- NIST IREX 10 scores show the speed and accuracy of Innovatrics’ new iris biometric algorithm
- BixeLab takes the award for biometrics services to the international market
- Cerence develops Knight Rider-style voice biometric interactions for cars
- Clearview was granted patent for building a biometric training dataset by USPTO
- Texas university launches lab to investigate AI bias with support from Pangiam
- Precise Biometrics extends YOUNiQ contracts in Sweden, unveils Algo division plans
- Innovatrics’ fingerprint biometric algorithms stand out in NIST test
- The final demo of EU’s D4FLY spots ID fraud
- Tascent’s multimodal biometrics contracted for Palau border, Australian prisons
- Speechmatics, Yoti selected for Tech Nation’s Future Fifty accelerator program
- Marston Holdings certified for UK Digital Identity framework by BSI
- Vietnam govt-owned VNPT’s face biometric algorithm debuts in NIST FRVT
- Local NHS unit contract for DBS checks with face biometrics and liveness detection opens
- Precise Biometrics extends YOUNiQ contracts in Sweden, unveils Algo division plans
- Yoti partners with Talent Clouds on DBS checks with a digital ID, receives UK certification
- Dutch Police refine rapid forensic biometrics approach after early testing
- Trust Stamp launches privacy-centric biometric solution for government customers
- Optus hack spurs interest in digital identity within Australian government, banks
- Korea expands airport check-ins with palm vein biometrics, enrollment to bank branches
- Paravision launches biometric search engine and tips expanded focus at Converge
- CyberLink integrates face biometrics in the CAC payment system
- Behavioral analytics from NeuroID integrated by TransUnion to stop fraud and false positives
- Decentralized digital ID suite Oliu launched by ATB Ventures for Canadian enterprises
- Daon adds multi-flight travel capabilities to the digital ID app VeriFLY
- Humanode Public Sale Wave II will commence on October 12
- Gates Foundation commits $200M to digital ID and other public infrastructure
- Data security rules needed for Nepalese digital ID, Nigeria’s World Bank funding
- Kenya to comply with regional bloc directive on biometric passports from the end November
- Ugandan officials emphasize inclusive digital ID plan to enroll 17M unregistered citizens
- Philippines officials want to fight driver’s license fraud with facial recognition
- Twenty20 adds facial recognition capabilities to gunshot detection security solution
- Oosto offers advice on facial recognition implementations for stadium security
- Researchers pitch model law for facial recognition to the Australian government
- Texas university launches lab to investigate AI bias with support from Pangiam
- Private medical record photos spotted in the biometrics training dataset
- Biometric 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 factors propelling the growth of the biometric system market.
Biometric Research & Development
Latest Research:
Microsoft’s Horvitz says it will take more than code to deal with the deepfake threat
In a development that should surprise few in the facial recognition community, there is more unsettling news about how deepfakes are evolving and how fast.
Algorithms capable of interacting with people and creating entire narratives could soon be part of propagandists’ “persuasion toolkits,” according to Microsoft Chief Science Officer Eric Horvitz.
In a new research paper, he writes that the near future holds deepfake tactics and technological advancements that could loosen society’s already shaky grasp on reality.
Horvitz has a list of steps humanity should take to meet the challenge it faces. For better or worse, several steps depend not on technology but on people becoming more analytical when it comes to the information they consume.
He sees two immediate threats — interactive deepfakes and compositional deepfakes. The first ones will interact with humans in ways that make it all but impossible for an ordinary person to know they are talking to code.
The second will be deepfakes with backstories. Creating scenes in which the deepfake lives. It could be the scene of an accident or a collection of social media clips appearing to show a person at birthday parties over the years.
Recent research is disquieting. Horvitz cites 2020 research into neural voice puppetry that creates a “compelling” spectacle of real-time face movements matching words being uttered behind the scenes by an actor.
Mapping audio to an expression and generating a realistic rendering, he writes, was done in 5 milliseconds using an Nvidia 1080Ti processor. Two years before that, researchers demonstrated deep neural models that generate realistic speaking from text.
And work avatars that are designed to mimic a human’s idiosyncratic communication style is leading to avatars that “um” realistically, facially fidget and so on.
Hybrid avatars also are in the wings. These hand control of a conversation over to a deepfake avatar, but have the actual human model matching the fake ready to be slyly swapped in when needed.
Those developments and others are laying the foundation for realistically interactive deepfakes, writes Horvitz.
Compositional deepfakes are a “concerning, feasible direction” as well, he writes. They create narratives, not just an image or an avatar made to do a task.
This nightmarish scenario includes the possibility of completely fabricating incidents to be spliced, so to speak, between real events. The goal would be to make a fabricated event meld seamlessly with actual events, conveying trust in the fakery.
Part of the answer is creating an environment that promotes good local and international journalism. Identifying trusted people with trusted information has always been a crucial step in combating disinformation. Along with that, Horvitz prescribes media literacy projects.
Content provenance, protocols for authenticity, watermarks and other digital ‘fingerprints’ also can make it easier to avoid fraudulent personalities and events.
Researchers pitch model law for facial recognition to the Australian government
Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney have published a model law to regulate facial recognition technologies in the country.
According to the school’s Human Technology Institute, the document is a response to calls for reform from civil society and the private sector, as well as government officials and academic experts.
“Lawmakers in Australia, like those around the world, never anticipated our face data would be harvested on an industrial scale, then used in everything from our smartphones to police CCTV cameras,” reads the report. “So, we shouldn’t be surprised that our laws have not kept pace.”
At the same time, the researchers explain that since face biometrics technologies can be used for good and ill, neither banning it nor the “current free-for-all” seems ideal. Still, regulatory failure has also left the community vulnerable to harmful uses of facial recognition.
Facial recognition “can be used consistently with international human rights law, and indeed in ways that achieve public and other benefits,” reads the document.
However, it “necessarily also engages, and often limits or restricts, a range of human rights.”
The model law aims to define how individual applications function, as well as where and how they are deployed.
Further, the UTS report says, the performance or accuracy of the applications should also be publicly available, alongside the effect of any decisions made that rely on facial recognition.
Finally, the model law would ensure affected individuals can provide free and informed consent on the use of their biometric data.
In order to enact these changes, the university researchers have called on Australia Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to lead the reform by taking four key steps.
First, they would like Dreyfus to introduce a bill based on the model law to the Australian Parliament.
Second, the attorney-general should assign regulatory responsibility to the information commissioner (or another suitable regulator) to create a facial recognition technical standard and to guide developers with related resources and insights.
The third step mentioned in the report calls on the attorney-general to initiate a process with his state and territory counterparts to ensure that the final law is harmonized across all Australian jurisdictions.
Finally, the attorney-general should work with other relevant federal ministers to establish a government face biometrics taskforce charged with a double mandate: to ensure the development and use of biometrics according to legal and ethical standards and to lead the country’s international engagement efforts on the technology.
This “would also demonstrate how Australia can use law to protect against harmful uses of new technology, while simultaneously incentivizing innovation for public benefit.”
The report comes amid increasing scrutiny of face biometrics system deployments by Australian schools and casinos, among others.
But perhaps the country’s most controversial deployment of face biometrics was in 2020 when the Australian Federal Police confirmed it was running trials of the Clearview AI facial recognition software, which reportedly failed to comply with the privacy commissions’ regulations.
Talking to ABC News, Kate Bower from Australia’s leading consumer advocacy group Choice said her team is now witnessing increased use of facial recognition without clear guardrails.
“If there is a chance of discrimination or bias or potentially harmful situations,” Bower said, “safeguards need to be in place or at least make the hurdles very, very high.”
Mark Morey, secretary of Unions New South Wales, told ABC News he was not “writing the technology off” entirely. Still, he remained highly concerned about its uses to surveil and punish workers.
More generally, the advocacy group Human Rights Law Centre said that under the model law, police and intelligence services would not be able to use facial recognition unless certain conditions were met.
“The attorney-general should heed the call of this report and use its model law as a starting point for a dedicated legal framework that regulates facial recognition technology in Australia,” says Kieran Pender, a senior lawyer at center.
Texas university launches lab to investigate AI bias with support from Pangiam
A new lab has been established at SMU (Southern Methodist University), with Pangiam as its first industry partner, to investigate how facial recognition and other artificial intelligence systems perform on diverse user populations.
The Intelligent Systems and Bias Examination Lab (ISaBEL) has been founded at SMU’s AT&T Center for Virtualization. The lab will study how to mitigate bias in AI systems based on the latest peer reviewed research and standards.
ISO recently approved a working draft of a standard for assessing the performance of facial recognition on different demographic groups, and is seeking research community feedback.
The announcement notes that automated decisions are made with AI algorithms in various use cases from airport security to judicial sentencing and could greatly impact different groups. Bias can be introduced, however, through incomplete data or reliance on flawed data.
“How to study and mitigate bias in AI systems is a fast-moving area, with pockets of researchers all over the world making important contributions,” comments John Howard, an AT&T Center research fellow and biometrics expert and principal data scientist at the Maryland Test Facility. Howard is also an editor on the above standard. “Labs like ISaBEL will help ensure these breakthroughs make their way into the products where they can do the most good and also educate the next generation of computer scientists about these important issues.”
Experiments will be designed and carried out at ISaBEL with diverse datasets to quantify AI system performance across different demographic groups, according to the announcement.
“At Pangiam, we are fundamentally committed to driving the industry forward with impactful efforts such as this,” says Pangiam Chief AI Officer and SMU Alumnus, Shaun Moore. “Bias mitigation has been a paramount focus for our team since 2018 and we set out to demonstrate publicly our effort toward parity of performance across countries and ethnicities. SMU is the perfect institution for this research.”
Liability of AI applications under scrutiny in UK, Canada
Artificial intelligence (AI) applications, particularly those focused on biometric data gathering, have recently come under another round of scrutiny both in Europe and Canada.
The European Commission proposed the AI Liability Directive last week, a set of rules designed to aid redress for people whose privacy was harmed by AI-powered and digital devices like self-driving cars, voice assistants and drones.
According to BBC reporting, the Directive may operate alongside the EU’s proposed AI Act if successfully turned into law, introducing a “presumption of causality” for those claiming injuries by AI-enabled products.
In other words, individuals harmed by these systems would not have to provide technical explanations for how AI systems work but merely show how they have harmed them in practical terms.
“The objective of this proposal is to promote the rollout of trustworthy AI to harvest its full benefits for the internal market. It does so by ensuring victims of damage caused by AI obtain equivalent protection to victims of damage caused by products in general,” reads the text of the Directive.
“It also reduces legal uncertainty of businesses developing or using AI regarding their possible exposure to liability and prevents the emergence of fragmented AI-specific adaptations of national civil liability rules.”
Canada is also following suit in terms of AI regulations, with the federal government proposing its Bill C-27 legislation in June, aka the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA). However, not everyone agrees the bill would represent a substantial step forward for privacy.
Case in point, a recent analysis by legal expert Richard Stobbe dissects the act, claiming that while the “regulated activity” mentioned in the bill would undoubtedly apply to banks and airlines, its practical scope will be broader than that.
“That is a purposely broad definition which is designed to catch both the companies that use these systems and providers of such systems, as well as data processors who deploy AI systems in the course of data processing, where such systems are used in the course of international or interprovincial trade and commerce,” Stobbe writes.
The terms “artificial intelligence system,” “high-impact system,” and “harm” are also not sufficiently defined, according to the legal expert.
“I can assure you that lawyers will be arguing for years over the nuances of these various terms,” Stobbe says in an editorial published by Mondaq.
“All of this could be clarified in future drafts of Bill C-27, which would make it easier for lawyers to advise their clients when navigating the complex legal obligations in AIDA. Stay tuned. This law has some maturing to do, and much detail is left to the regulations (which are not yet drafted).”
Dispelling the vagueness in the legislation and determining harm for liability purposes, however, are tasks that come with their own challenges.
University of Washington Assistant Professor and Brooking’s Nonresident Fellow Aylin Caliskan and Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. Candidate Ryan Steed are concerned that risks like bias found in audio and visual AI systems are often discovered only after they have been widely deployed.
“Our research shows that bias is not only reflected in the patterns of language but also in the image datasets used to train computer vision models,” the duo writes in a Brookings article.
“As a result, widely used computer vision models such as iGPT and DALL-E 2 generate new explicit and implicit characterizations and stereotypes that perpetuate existing biases about social groups, which further shape human cognition.”
In a study published last year, Caliskan and Steed prompted iGPT to complete an image given a woman’s face.
“Fifty-two percent of the autocompleted images had bikinis or low-cut tops. In comparison, faces of men were autocompleted with suits or career-related attire 42 percent of the time.”
These results cannot necessarily be anticipated based on known bias tendencies, either, they say.
“The biases at the intersection of race and gender are aligned with theories on intersectionality, reflecting emergent biases not explained by the sum of biases towards either race or gender identity alone.”
Main News:
Trio of Apple patent filings describe biometrics innovations for various devices
Apple has had a trio of patent applications published that describe biometrics applications on a variety of iDevices.
Each patent filing has been published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and spotted by Patently Apple.
The filing for ‘Ultra-wideband location tracking to perform voice input operation’ does not mention biometrics by name, but deals directly with the use of high-precision location data to limit voice biometric authentication to specific scenarios. This could be used, for instance, to ensure that the user does not activate their voice-controlled device accidentally.
Ultra-wideband (UWB) signals can be used to determine the direction and exact location of a speaker, according to the filing. This allows it to be used to restrict the authentication attempt based on the distance of the speaker or whether they are facing a device. The same technology is also described as a method for securing authentication on one device through another, such as for interacting with smart home devices with an Apple Watch.
‘Electronic device having sealed button biometric sensing system’ describes a combined button and sensor for fingerprint biometrics. Unlike the legacy home button which integrates Touch ID on some Apple devices, however, the newly-invented button is sealed against “ingress of liquid and other contaminants.”
The sensor itself could be ultrasonic, capacitive, or optical, or even use some other kind of fingerprint data capturing. The seal could be formed by pressure-sensitive adhesives, heat-activated substances, or elastomeric materials.
The drawing accompanying this patent application notably feature an Apple Watch.
‘Split processing of biometric data’ describes a method for dividing the data processing operations behind biometric matching between a peripheral device and a host device that is coupled with it.
The biometric data the two processors handle could be pre-processed, for example to ensure that the probe data is adequate for matching purposes.
The invention could enable biometrics integrations on devices like a wireless keyboard, taking care of the main computing burden on a MacBook or similar device while protecting the biometric data by encrypting it prior to transmission. The split processing technique could also prevent biometric authentication from taking too long, with inadequate data capture attempts rejected before the secondary processor gets involved.
Apple is also seeking a patent on a combined display and camera technology that could be used to put Face ID biometrics directly into the screen, among others.
BixeLab takes award for biometrics services to international market
BixeLab has been recognized for its engagement with the international biometrics market and community by an Australian Capital Territory government program.
The company was named the top ‘Exporting Government Solutions & Emerging Exporter,’ as one of seven businesses honored at the 2022 ACT Chief Minister’s Export Awards. A complete list of award winners was announced on LinkedIn by the Canberra Business Chamber.
“We’re thrilled for this recognition and believe that these awards will help us grow our reach in the ever-evolving digital identity markets and ecosystems,” BixeLab Founder Ted Dunstone told Biometric Update in an email. “The pandemic has accelerated government needs for digital transformation; the private sector has also seen enormous growth in digital identity in recent years. BixeLab is at the epicentre of this change, providing best-in-class biometric testing in accordance with national and international best practises.”
Asked about BixeLab’s success in reaching governments and business customers overseas, Dunstone notes that it is the only NIST/NVLAP and FIDO Alliance-accredited biometric testing laboratory in the Southern Hemisphere.
“The trustworthiness of a digital identity solution is provided through independent testing, verification, and certification of biometric parties forming part of such ecosystems. BixeLab biometric testing services verify that claims made by a vendor can hold up under real world conditions,” Dunstone adds.
“Digital identity will continue to rapidly evolve as national identity frameworks and privacy technologies mature. Whilst digital businesses and identity verification providers need to ensure they meet (and exceed) international standards, BixeLab will continue to assist them building trust in testing.”
Cerence develops Knight Rider-style voice biometric interactions for cars
Innovative biometric technology is on the road, as several auto manufacturers roll out new features that use facial recognition, radar, Artificial Intelligence and other tools to enhance safety and convenience for drivers.
Those who remember the 1980s television show Knight Rider may recognize echoes of it in Cerence Inc’s Exterior Vehicle Communication, a suite of AI and voice-powered features that allow drivers to interact with their cars from the outside, according to a company announcement.
Cerence, a global leader in automotive technology, has combined its natural language understanding, text-to-speech, speech signal enhancement, and voice biometrics tools with an extensive microphone system to create something like Amazon’s Alexa, but for a car. Cerence Exterior Vehicle Communication will allow drivers to trigger actions with voice commands — for instance, to open the trunk or lock the car — and will have built-in biometric security features, such as voice recognition technology to verify a user’s identity. With Cerence’s system, if you are not David Hasselhoff, it is not a problem.
In a similar but more mundane implementation of voice controls, BMW is adding Amazon Alexa to the next generation of its in-car assistant, reports Jalopnik.
Some new biometric tech for vehicles is more inward-focused, and addresses life-or-death issues. Take Volvo’s new interior radar system, designed to safeguard against toddlers being left in hot cars, which U.S. government statistics show has caused more than 900 deaths nationwide since 1998. The company says sensors in the roof and trunk of the car will activate whenever someone tries locking the car, to determine if children or pets have been left inside. The system covers the entire interior and can detect movement down to the sub-millimetre. Volvo plans to roll it out before the end of 2022, on its EX90 electric SUV model.
Clearview granted patent for building biometric training dataset by USPTO
A patent has been granted to Clearview AI for its method of gathering and preparing training data for face biometrics algorithms.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued the patent for ‘Scalable Training Data Preparation Pipeline And Efficient Distributed Trainer For Deep Neural Networks In Facial Recognition,’ which the company says enables it to create facial recognition that is highly accurate and bias-free from publicly available information.
“This distinction further cements Clearview AI’s intellectual property protection and lead in the artificial intelligence and facial recognition market,” says Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That. “Clearview AI’s mission is to reduce bias in technology, and as a person of mixed race this is highly important to me.”
Ton-That and Clearview Vice President of Research Terence Liu discussed how clusters are built within training datasets and the importance of patenting the technology with Biometric Update in a recent interview.
Clearview’s approach to training data differs from that of some other facial recognition developers, who use datasets made up of celebrities that do not evenly represent all demographics.
“Incumbent companies sometimes wait and see with new technologies to see the viability and adoption of them in the marketplace, then copy innovations later once they have been proven to be valuable,” Ton-That adds. “These patents help protect us against a potential future competitor who would like to copy our facial recognition search engine, or our method for creating a highly accurate, bias-free facial recognition algorithm from large scale public internet datasets.”
Clearview says the success of its approach is reflected in its results in the NIST Face Recognition Vendor Test, including top-two results in the Wild category and better than 99 percent accuracy across all demographics.
The company was also awarded a patent for applying facial recognition to gather information from the public internet earlier this year.
Precise Biometrics extends YOUNiQ contracts in Sweden, unveils Algo division plans
Precise Biometrics has unveiled a series of updates, extending a partnership with rental space solutions firm Algeco and welcoming new customers to its cloud-based visitor management system EastCoast Online. The company has also unveiled future plans for its Algo business unit.
Innovatrics’ fingerprint biometric algorithms stand out in NIST test
Innovatrics announced it has improved its Minex III fingerprint algorithms further, building on its previous top results in the latest tests from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
According to the test results, the company’s fingerprint biometric algorithm remained in the first position in the pooled category and is now number one in the native category.
Also, the Innovatrics template generator is now the fastest in the world in the native one-finger category and second (in a tie with Neurotechnology) in accuracy in pooled results.
From a technical standpoint, the NIST Minex III tests check for interoperability of template generators and matches from various providers so they can be deployed in applications for the Personal Identity Verification program of the U.S. government.
In practical terms, the matcher’s accuracy in minutiae matching will enhance searches and identification in large databases, like those found in Automated Biometric Identification Systems (ABIS) and used to solve criminal cases, protect borders and prevent identity fraud.
“With the improved algorithm, the system is state-of-the-art when identifying people via fingerprints,” explains Matus Kapusta, ABIS business unit director at Innovatrics. According to the executive, the ABIS relying on Innovatrics’s biometric algorithms is already in use in countries all over the globe with over 1 billion people enrolled.
Moving forward, the company said the template generator would find its place in mobile and embedded devices that require fast fingerprint extraction, even with limited computing power.
The announcement comes months after the company announced top results for iris matching in the 2021 U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Biometric Technology Rally.
Final demo of EU’s D4FLY spots ID fraud
European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex has revealed its participation in the final demonstration of the D4FLY biometric project at the end of June, under a research and innovation initiative funded by the EU Horizon 2020 program.
Executives at Veridos, the project coordinator, shared the first results of the biometric border-crossing initiative last May. An update arrived last Monday.
Frontex says in the announcement that agency officials gave an overview of techniques developed through the initiative to improve verification technologies and augment systems in place to counter emerging threats in document and identity fraud.
These included forged documents, impostor fraud and morphed faces, particularly at manual and highly automated border crossing points.
The D4FLY systems were tested in two scenarios: One was an automated border post and the other a coach in which border guards were verifying identities in a crowded, confined space.
“The demonstration participants pre-enrolled using a specifically designed kiosk and then passed through a biometric corridor,” Frontex wrote.
“During the enrolment, the passport was scanned by the kiosk, and different cameras captured biometric features,” using 2D, 3D and thermal face scans as well as iris and somatotype (body shape) features.
Frontex further explained that all encrypted reference data was stored in a database and that a phone was used as a “carrier of identity” while passing through the corridor.
“The sensors installed in the corridor area captured participants’ biometrics, compared them with those stored in the database and either confirmed or rejected the border crossing to a border guard carrying a tablet as border check equipment,” according to the post.
In the coaching scenario, identity verification is performed on smartphones by border guards.
In the tests, Frontex said, the biometric systems spotted two types of masks and contact lenses with fake iris biometrics, as well as a passport with a morphed photograph.
The agency confirmed it would continue to follow the project’s developments. The announcement comes two months after Frontex called on developers to look at software tools designed to manually compare biometric data.
Tascent’s multimodal biometrics contracted for Palau border, Australian prisons
The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (BCBP) of the western Pacific Ocean Republic of Palau has reached a deal with Tascent for the deployment of its multimodal biometrics at the country’s border crossings.
The company says it is also supplying the same solution for identification in correctional services across the Australian state of New South Wales.
Speechmatics, Yoti selected for Tech Nation’s Future Fifty accelerator program
AI and biometrics providers Speechmatics and Yoti were among 13 companies selected to join Tech Nation’s eleventh Future Fifty accelerator program for late-stage tech companies.
Over the past ten years, the UK-based growth platform reports it has supported 22 percent (30) of the 138 tech unicorns founded in the UK, raising £16.3 billion (roughly US$17.69 billion) collectively.
“As a late-stage tech business, the stakes are high, and Future Fifty was designed to offer tailor-made guidance that addresses challenges unique to the most successful tech companies in the country,” reads a blog post about the announcement.
“All of the companies joining Future Fifty 11.0 will be growing and expanding rapidly over the coming months, with their average projected headcount increase for the next year sitting at over 400 percent, and with the businesses planning to expand to 44 countries collectively in the next year.”
Further, by the end of March 2023, the rest of the Future Fifty cohort will guide them through their scaling journey by granting them access to various opportunities.
These include peer-to-peer learning sessions, in-depth masterclasses, sessions with key government officials, exclusive ministerial roundtables, and access to a dedicated Tech Nation Visa team.
“It’s always wonderful to see companies which I met at the napkin stage go on to become household names,” comments Niamh Gavin, founder, investor and Future Fifty 11.0 Judge.
“Such a feat is even more impressive when they do so despite recent global headwinds. Future Fifty’s mix of C-Suite masterclasses, peer support and Government introductions facilitates sustainable growth, which is key for the UK ecosystem.”
Speechmatics joins Tech Nation’s Future Fifty list months after raising $62 million in a Series B funding round aimed at improving the accuracy of its voice biometric algorithms regardless of speakers’ demographic, age, gender, accent, dialect, and location.
As for Yoti, the company has been very active over the summer, bringing selfie age verification to Instagram in a U.S. pilot in June, and becoming one of the first certified digital identity service providers for Right to Rent checks in the UK in July.
Marston Holdings certified for UK Digital Identity framework by BSI
Marston Holdings has become the first company certified by business improvement firm BSI to comply with the UK Digital Identity & Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF) standards.
BSI is part of the government’s pilot certification scheme to allow identity service providers to become accredited to certify against the framework. Marston Holdings, on the other hand, is one of the UK’s largest transportation and enforcement services companies.
“Achieving certification to the UK Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework provides clients with the assurance that they will receive a safe and streamlined digital identification experience,” explains Frank Lee, UK & I product certification director at BSI.
“As more and more organizations leverage digital identities and related technology, we expect the demand for the scheme to grow, and we look forward to working with many more digital identity service providers in the future to achieve certification.”
BSI is one of only five certification bodies under UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) offering the certification. The framework and pilot certification scheme launch come months after the UK announced its intent to allow employers and landlords to use certified digital identity service providers (IDSPs) to carry out identity checks on their behalf.
“Marston Holdings is delighted to be the first business to be accredited to the UK Digital Identity & Attributes Trust Framework by BSI,” comments Craig Scott, group operations director (BPO) at Marston Holdings.
“As a pioneering business within the identity document verification industry and as a market leader in providing clients with a fully managed right to work and background screening service, the accreditation provided by BSI to Marston Holdings helps identify us as a trusted partner to both our current and future clients.”
- DIATF still a ‘work in progress’: Tony Blair Institute says
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has published a new blog post, highlighting the limitation of current digital ID projects in the UK and calling for a centralization of these technologies.
Written by Kirsty Innes, director of the Institute’s digital government unit and Antonio Weiss, digital transformation and public services expert, the article suggests that the last two governments in the UK abandoned some of GDS‘ most valuable projects.
“The Verify function was an ambitious effort to provide a means for UK citizens to prove claims about themselves in a wide range of public and private sector contexts,” reads the post.
“But it ran into the sand due to lack of political backing, to be replaced with One Login for Government for public services, and the Digital ID Trust Framework for the private sector — both still works in progress.”
According to identity experts, a solid digital ID infrastructure also requires challenging long-held beliefs and providing various infrastructural services to citizens.
“A combination of digital identity and smart contracts technologies could safely and securely deposit urgently needed monies to citizens the minute a new policy is enacted,” write Innes and Weiss.
“This would require political champions for such new approaches, and explaining why new technologies for digital identity are often safer and more secure than the current, siloed and paper-based model.”
The Institute’s executives mentioned Estonia and Austria as examples where these new approaches to digital identity are being deployed successfully.
Vietnam govt-owned VNPT’s face biometric algorithm debuts in NIST FRVT
The face biometrics technology of Vietnam-based VNPT, FaceID, has scored in the top 15 in the latest Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) from America’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the ‘Kiosk’ categories for both the 1:1 and 1:N benchmarks.
The results in the September 27 updates come at a moment of expansion for VNPT Group, the government-owned postal and telecommunications provider behind FaceID. According to VnEconomy, as of May 9, 2022, the VNPT eKYC (electronic know your customer) platform had supported nearly 700 million transactions across different areas of society.
The NIST results, particularly in the Kiosk category, will now attract further customers, with a specific focus on finance and banking, VNEconomy writes.
The VNPT Group holds a key position within Vietnam’s economy, having implemented Vietnam’s National Population Database System. The company provides face biometrics as part of a number of services. FaceID powers products including mobile identity verification and artificial intelligence (AI) cameras for surveillance and traffic monitoring applications, among others. It also offers digital identity products under the BioID brand.
The civil registry database is one of several national projects VNPT Group has reportedly implemented in Vietnam. It has deployed intelligent operations centers for smart city applications across more than 30 provinces in the country.
The company has also been trusted as an essential partner of many business agencies in the digital transformation process.
Moving forward, VnEconomy says VNPT Group is also working on other technologies, some of them biometric, and looking for partners to develop additional projects.
NIST IREX 10 scores show speed and accuracy of Innovatrics’ new iris biometric algorithm
The latest iris identification algorithm from Innovatrics ranks among the best both in accuracy and speed in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Iris Exchange (IREX) 10 benchmarks. The company puts some of the success down to its small templates.
The company’s iris biometric algorithm ranked fourth for two-eye accuracy, sixth for single-eye accuracy, and eighth for overall accuracy, according to the IREX 10 Leaderboards. As for speed, Innovatrics ranked fifth for two-eye search time and 17th for two-eye template creation time.
The IREX 10: Identification Track assesses iris recognition performance for identification (one-to-many) applications.
IREX 10 is administered at the Image Group’s Biometrics Research Lab (BRL), and enables developers to submit their matching software for testing on sequestered iris data. As an ongoing evaluation, developers may submit it at any time. At the time of writing, 26 iris biometric algorithms have been submitted for the latest version of IREX 10.
“From our field experience, compact templates in biometric databases save significant amounts of storage space, allowing for quicker access to the database and lowering maintenance costs,” says Matus Kapusta, director of the automated biometric identification system (ABIS) Business Unit at Innovatrics.
According to the biometrics expert, the combination of speed and accuracy matching with quick template creation and compact size makes the latest Innovatrics iris identification algorithm a versatile offering, particularly for large-scale border control or national ID issuance solutions.
These Weeks’ News by Categories
Access Control:
- Confidence in work from home security rises along with MFA adoption: Thales survey
- Precise Biometrics extends YOUNiQ contracts in Sweden, unveils Algo division plans
- UK passwordless authentication guidelines include FIDO2 and MFA biometrics
Consumer Electronics:
- People are getting an uneasy feeling about Amazon’s Astro
- Cerence develops Knight Rider-style voice biometric interactions for cars
- Trio of Apple patent filings describe biometrics innovations for various devices
- Samsung’s under-display camera for biometrics shown in new patent filing
Mobile Biometrics
- Home Office identifies areas for improvement in biometrics self-enrollment systems
- Digital ID credentials come to the Apple Wallet, inform apps, but EU may cause friction
- Yoti partners with Talent Clouds on DBS checks with digital ID, receives UK certification
- Dutch Police refine rapid forensic biometrics approach after early testing
- Trust Stamp launches privacy-centric biometric solution for government customers
- New solution and partnerships unveiled amid flurry of selfie biometrics and KYC activity
- Daon adds multi-flight travel capabilities to digital ID app VeriFLY
- Use biometric and MFA layers to block gaps in fraud protection created by digitization
Financial Services:
- Optus hack spurs interest in digital identity within Australian government, banks
- Consumer trust in banks is mixed. Behavioral biometrics can help, face less so
- Korea expands airport check-ins with palm vein biometrics, enrollment to bank branches
- New solution and partnerships unveiled amid flurry of selfie biometrics and KYC activity
- CyberLink integrates face biometrics in CAC payment system
- Behavioral analytics from NeuroID integrated by TransUnion to stop fraud and false positives
- Pakistan arrests suspects over digital ID fraud in floods cash relief program
- KYC fraud loss tool launched by Sumsub amid digital ID deals, award
Civil / National ID:
- Optus hack spurs interest in digital identity within Australian government, banks
- Digital ID credentials come to the Apple Wallet, inform apps, but EU may cause friction
- Charting cooperation for inclusive, trusted digital public infrastructure at the UN
- UK digital identity program stalls, DCMS calls for industry support at OIX
- Ethiopia’s national digital ID prepares foundation ahead of scale-up
- Decentralized digital ID suite Oliu launched by ATB Ventures for Canadian enterprises
- ID Day boost, SDG warning and dynamic new identity and inclusion models for Togo
- Yoti partners with Talent Clouds on DBS checks with digital ID, receives UK certification
- Philippines officials want to fight driver’s license fraud with facial recognition
- Panel probes future potential of face biometrics for elections, DNA for civil registries
- Digital ID advances drive Denmark to top of competitiveness ranking
- India, Nigeria, Pakistan discuss sustainable financing for digital ID schemes with ID4Africa
- US creeps towards digital ID legislation as election looms
- Daon adds multi-flight travel capabilities to digital ID app VeriFLY
- GAIN one year in: demos successful but plenty of work ahead to reach global interoperability
- Gates Foundation commits $200M to digital ID and other public infrastructure
- Data security rules needed for Nepalese digital ID, Nigeria’s World Bank funding
- Kenya to comply with regional bloc directive on biometric passports from end November
- Ugandan officials emphasize inclusive digital ID plan to enroll 17M unregistered citizens
- Marston Holdings certified for UK Digital Identity framework by BSI
Government Services & Elections:
- Panel probes future potential of face biometrics for elections, DNA for civil registries
- Criticism of Liberia’s biometric voter registration contract rumored to irk Chinese embassy
- Bangladesh to allow some leeway in case of biometric match failure
- Liberian agencies spar over alleged irregularities of biometric voter card contract decision
- Criticism of Liberia’s biometric voter registration contract rumored to irk Chinese embassy
- Biometrics contracts for police and immigration in Trinidad and Tobago’s new security budget
- Tascent’s multimodal biometrics contracted for Palau border, Australian prisons
Facial Recognition:
- Paravision launches biometric search engine and tips expanded focus at Converge
- Vietnam govt-owned VNPT’s face biometric algorithm debuts in NIST FRVT
- Serbia lobbying Western support to carry on with smart city biometrics project amid criticism
- Innovatrics adds web access to ABIS to enhance video processing speed for criminal probes
- Philippines officials want to fight driver’s license fraud with facial recognition
- Funding is out there for biometrics, to meet diverse but specific needs
- Canadian police reveal face biometrics tools used for missing persons investigations
- Restrictions on police use of facial recognition proposed in US Congress
- CyberLink integrates face biometrics in CAC payment system
- RecFaces releases biometric KYC solution for queue management
- Microsoft’s Horvitz says it will take more than code to deal with the deepfake threat
- Attorneys, digital rights advocates want facial recognition process open to discovery in court
- Clearview granted a patent for building biometric training dataset by USPTO
- Texas university launches lab to investigate AI bias with support from Pangiam
- Private medical record photos spotted in biometrics training dataset
- Twenty20 adds facial recognition capabilities to gunshot detection security solution
- Researchers pitch model law for facial recognition to Australian government
- Oosto offers advice on facial recognition implementations for stadium security
- NZ police delete unlawfully taken photos, but biometric privacy concerns remain
Fingerprint Recognition:
- Fingerprint Cards gets its biometric sensors in new round of laptops, smartphones
- Bangladesh to allow some leeway in case of biometric match failure
- Innovatrics’ fingerprint biometric algorithms stand out in NIST test
Biometrics Industry Events
Authenticate 2022: Oct 17, 2022 — Oct 19, 2022
IFINTEC Finance Technologies Conference: Oct 18, 2022 — Oct 19, 2022
Digital Identity and Digital Onboarding for Banking 3rd Annual: Oct 20, 2022 — Oct 21, 2022
Money 20/20 USA: Oct 23, 2022 — Oct 26, 2022
Biometrics Institute Annual Congress: Oct 26, 2022 — Oct 27, 2022
International Face Performance Conference (IFPC) 2022: Nov 15, 2022 — Nov 17, 2022
6th Border Management and Identity Conference (6th BMIC): Dec 7, 2022 — Dec 9, 2022
MISC
- Private medical record photos spotted in biometrics training dataset: Medical record photos are private — but that may not stop them from showing up in datasets used to train artificial intelligence (AI) and biometric systems, according to a story on Ars Technica.
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