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US invests $40m in defence biometrics
NEWS/COMMENT ...Continued from page 11 “It can be extremely distressful when a parent and child are separated during a disaster. The RallyPoint solution, including BIO-key’s finger matching technology, securely connects loved ones and will thereby have an immediate and positive impact in emergency situations.” identiMetrics CEO Dr Jay Fry added: “I have spent most of my career in education, so know first-hand the difficulties in managing all the complex aspects of school emergencies and evacuations. RallyPoint was designed to notify and calm anxious parents as early as possible; provide first responders and school officials with critical information in real time; and provide a safe and orderly way for parents to pick up their children at the reunification point which is often disorderly, chaotic and potentially dangerous.” • In other news, the Singapore Police Force has chosen BIO-key’s technology to secure online access to its critical information. The police service’s 38,000-plus members will enrol their fingerprints onto BIO-key’s ID Director for Windows credential management platform, which provides biometric authentication, using the Microsoft-approved EcoID compact fingerprint scanner. “It’s an honour to have BIO-key hardware and software recognised by a prominent international law enforcement agency as they understand the value of strong security,” said BIO-Key’s Mike DePasquale.
defence sector
US invests $40m in defence biometrics
T
he US Department of Defense has awarded contracts worth nearly $40m to biometric tech firms Booz Allen Hamilton and TWOSENSE.AI. In by far the biggest contract, Virginia-based Booz Allen Hamilton has won a $36.65m fixed-price deal to supply hand-held biometric hardware base units to the US Navy’s Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. The contract is part of an Identity Dominance System (IDS) technology refresh for the Center, and is due to be finished by January 2024. Meanwhile, behavioural biometrics specialist TWOSENSE.AI has sealed a $2.42m contract to provide a deep neural network-based multifactor authentication system for the DoD. New York-based TWOSENSE.AI provides AI-based continuous authentication systems for the workplace. Its TWOSENSE.AI product continuously authenticates users by their behaviour, 12
Biometric Technology Today
The US Navy is taking new hand-held biometric hardware base units supplied by Booz Allen Hamilton.
such as how they walk, type, carry their device or interact with a screen. The new contract involves creating a new identity security system to be used internally by DoD staff, which will replace the existing Common Access Card (CAC) system with a mix of traditional and behavioural biometrics. It builds on an existing Assured Identity initiative involving DISA, Qualcomm and Samsung, and TWOSENSE.AI will be working with DISA to create the new mobile and workstation-based service. TWOSENSE.AI CEO Dr Dawud Gordon commented: “Both DISA and TWOSENSE. AI believe that continuous authentication is the cornerstone of securing identity. Behaviour-based authentication is invisible to the user, therefore it can be used continuously without creating any extra work.”
COMMENT Of all the facial recognition system suppliers slated by researchers and privacy campaigners in recent months, Amazon has had the roughest ride. Amazon apparently hit rock bottom last year when an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) study found its Rekognition FR software falsely matched 28 members of Congress with images in an arrest photo database, and disproportionately identified Congressional members of colour incorrectly. But the negative news just kept coming. Only last month, we reported how 85 civil rights, racial justice and faith groups were calling on Amazon, Microsoft and Google to stop selling their FR systems to the US Government. But while Microsoft’s Brad Smith was praised for his promise to act ethically when deploying face surveillance systems, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos was branded as “wholly irresponsible”, with the campaigners adding: “Amazon’s inaction in response to widespread concerns about face surveillance stands in contrast to the steps taken by its competitors.” Twisting the knife, a group of Amazon shareholders with over $1.3bn invested in the company echoed the call to ban sales of Rekognition to government agencies immediately. But now, finally, Amazon has spoken out. In a blog last month, the company’s vice president Michael Punke supported Microsoft’s calls for legislation to ethically
guide the use of FR, saying: “We understand why people want oversight and guidelines put in place to make sure facial recognition technology cannot be used to discriminate. We support the calls for a national legislative framework that protects individual civil rights and ensures governments are transparent in their use of facial recognition technology.” Punke also provided a belated defence of his firm’s software. “In the two-plus years we’ve been offering Amazon Rekognition, we have not received a single report of misuse by law enforcement,” he said. And he hit back at the “tests of Amazon Rekognition by outside groups attempting to show how the service could be used to discriminate”. In each case, Punke said: “We’ve demonstrated that the service was not used properly; and when we’ve re-created their tests using the service correctly, we’ve shown that facial recognition is actually a very valuable tool for improving accuracy and removing bias when compared to manual, human processes. These groups have refused to make their training data and testing parameters publicly available, but we stand ready to collaborate on accurate testing and improvements to our algorithms.” It’s a pity Amazon took so long to go public with its defence. But it’s positive that the company now supports the need for legal and ethical standards to guide FR. That way, perhaps, Amazon can finally turn a corner and win back some credibility in this market Tim Ring
March 2019
defence sector
US invests $40m in defence biometrics
T
he US Department of Defense has awarded contracts worth nearly $40m to biometric tech firms Booz Allen Hamilton and TWOSENSE.AI. In by far the biggest contract, Virginia-based Booz Allen Hamilton has won a $36.65m fixed-price deal to supply hand-held biometric hardware base units to the US Navy’s Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. The contract is part of an Identity Dominance System (IDS) technology refresh for the Center, and is due to be finished by January 2024. Meanwhile, behavioural biometrics specialist TWOSENSE.AI has sealed a $2.42m contract to provide a deep neural network-based multifactor authentication system for the DoD. New York-based TWOSENSE.AI provides AI-based continuous authentication systems for the workplace. Its TWOSENSE.AI product continuously authenticates users by their behaviour, 12
Biometric Technology Today
The US Navy is taking new hand-held biometric hardware base units supplied by Booz Allen Hamilton.
such as how they walk, type, carry their device or interact with a screen. The new contract involves creating a new identity security system to be used internally by DoD staff, which will replace the existing Common Access Card (CAC) system with a mix of traditional and behavioural biometrics. It builds on an existing Assured Identity initiative involving DISA, Qualcomm and Samsung, and TWOSENSE.AI will be working with DISA to create the new mobile and workstation-based service. TWOSENSE.AI CEO Dr Dawud Gordon commented: “Both DISA and TWOSENSE. AI believe that continuous authentication is the cornerstone of securing identity. Behaviour-based authentication is invisible to the user, therefore it can be used continuously without creating any extra work.”
COMMENT Of all the facial recognition system suppliers slated by researchers and privacy campaigners in recent months, Amazon has had the roughest ride. Amazon apparently hit rock bottom last year when an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) study found its Rekognition FR software falsely matched 28 members of Congress with images in an arrest photo database, and disproportionately identified Congressional members of colour incorrectly. But the negative news just kept coming. Only last month, we reported how 85 civil rights, racial justice and faith groups were calling on Amazon, Microsoft and Google to stop selling their FR systems to the US Government. But while Microsoft’s Brad Smith was praised for his promise to act ethically when deploying face surveillance systems, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos was branded as “wholly irresponsible”, with the campaigners adding: “Amazon’s inaction in response to widespread concerns about face surveillance stands in contrast to the steps taken by its competitors.” Twisting the knife, a group of Amazon shareholders with over $1.3bn invested in the company echoed the call to ban sales of Rekognition to government agencies immediately. But now, finally, Amazon has spoken out. In a blog last month, the company’s vice president Michael Punke supported Microsoft’s calls for legislation to ethically
guide the use of FR, saying: “We understand why people want oversight and guidelines put in place to make sure facial recognition technology cannot be used to discriminate. We support the calls for a national legislative framework that protects individual civil rights and ensures governments are transparent in their use of facial recognition technology.” Punke also provided a belated defence of his firm’s software. “In the two-plus years we’ve been offering Amazon Rekognition, we have not received a single report of misuse by law enforcement,” he said. And he hit back at the “tests of Amazon Rekognition by outside groups attempting to show how the service could be used to discriminate”. In each case, Punke said: “We’ve demonstrated that the service was not used properly; and when we’ve re-created their tests using the service correctly, we’ve shown that facial recognition is actually a very valuable tool for improving accuracy and removing bias when compared to manual, human processes. These groups have refused to make their training data and testing parameters publicly available, but we stand ready to collaborate on accurate testing and improvements to our algorithms.” It’s a pity Amazon took so long to go public with its defence. But it’s positive that the company now supports the need for legal and ethical standards to guide FR. That way, perhaps, Amazon can finally turn a corner and win back some credibility in this market Tim Ring
March 2019