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Orlando police defy protest to use Rekognition
NEWS/COMMENT ...Continued from page 3 US Defense Biometric and Forensic Agency’s examination services branch in fingerprint, face and iris compositions. She is the main author of the facial identification training curriculum I-3 offers worldwide and has trained hundreds of individuals worldwide in facial identification. Anne Wang, Gemalto Cogent’s director of biometric technology R&D, was awarded for her contribution to many of the company’s top-ranking, world-renowned biometric algorithms. She also led recent development efforts for ground-breaking touchless biometric capture technology and provided her expertise in multimodal biometrics to the UK Government’s core programme for biometrically identifying visa applicants and visitors to the country.
banking
Microsoft and NAB pilot face-based cash machine
M
icrosoft has joined forces with Australian bank NAB to design a proof-of-concept automatic teller machine (ATM) that allows customers to use their face to identify themselves and withdraw cash, with no need for a physical card. The aim is to speed up the ATM process and cut card fraud and skimming crime. The system uses a Microsoft Azure cloud-based application to verify customers who opt into the service, allowing them to withdraw cash from a machine using just facial recognition technology and a PIN. Microsoft Australia managing director Steven Worrall said: “Cloud computing and artificial intelligence present the opportunity for a new generation of secure, streamlined financial services. We believe AI will profoundly impact financial services and the sorts of solutions that banks will be able to deliver.” NAB chief technology officer Patrick Wright said there is a “need for banks to be simpler and faster for our customers. This concept is a look into what the future might hold for the way our customers access banking products and services.” The concept system was developed in approximately two months. It does not store images on the local ATM machine, these are held on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The biometric data used during the trial will be erased when it finishes. 12
Biometric Technology Today
privacy
Orlando police defy protest to use Rekognition
T
he Orlando police department in Florida has decided to keep testing Amazon’s Rekognition face system, defying civil liberties protests that police are using the ‘dragnet’ software for unregulated mass surveillance. On 18 October, Orlando announced that it will press ahead with a nine-month trial of the software. But this will be confined to Rekognition scanning the live feeds from eight cameras to identify only volunteer police officers and no members of the public. This follows Orlando’s decision back in June to temporarily stop testing Rekognition, when an initial six-month trial ended. At the time the city
was under pressure after the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and 35 other campaign groups accused Rekognition in May of dangerous mass surveillance. In July, ACLU also claimed that the Amazon system had wrongly indentified 28 members of the US Congress as criminals. Orlando’s latest decision to re-start trials is a fillip to Amazon. But Rekognition is still causing controversy. In October an anonymous Amazon employee told the Medium website that over 450 co-workers had written to CEO Jeff Bezos, demanding that Amazon “immediately” stop selling Rekognition to police departments across the US. The staff also demanded that Palantir – a software firm helping US government efforts to track and deport illegal immigrants – should be removed from Amazon Web Services and that Amazon should “institute employee oversight for ethical decisions”. So far, the employee said, they had received no response from Bezos. Rekognition is claimed to be able to store and search tens of millions of faces at a time.
COMMENT This issue we cover some good examples of biometric tech where vendors have found creative ways past the ‘Big Brother mass surveillance’ concerns that can hold adoption back. RealNetworks is one. This US firm hit the headlines in the summer when it offered its SAFR facial recognition technology (FRT) free to up to 100,000 schools in the US and Canada – as a way of protecting their students from random shooting attacks. The offer attracted some negative comment, and privacy campaigners focused on the suggestion that SAFR was offering unregulated mass surveillance technology to monitor children. The company has now responded positively to this by issuing best-practice guidelines for schools interested in its software. These cover everything from consent to security; they highlight that face systems should have built-in privacy features like encryption, there should be clear communication with parents, staff and students from the early project stages, and all stakeholders should be told precisely what data will be collected and how it will be used. It’s probably no coincidence that the advice matches the key elements of Europe’s new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) law, which defines best practice
in securing personal data. Elsewhere, we report on a sensitive application of fingerprint technology, to help possible victims of the AIDS disease in South Africa. A non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Shout It Now is using the biometric system to get round the problem that, through social stigma, many people at risk of AIDS refuse to be tested because they have to give their identification details. Shout It Now is using technology from Idversol and Integrated Biometrics to take people’s fingerprints, then create a private identifier for that person. That way, they can remain anonymous until they know their HIV status and can make decisions regarding treatment. This approach has almost tripled the rate of people taking tests. Finally, we feature NCR and Yoti who are working on an FRT system for US and UK supermarkets, that uses facial recognition to verify whether people buying products like cigarettes and alcohol are actually old enough to do so. The suppliers say the good outcome of their system is that it reduces confrontations at the checkout between supermarket staff and shoppers – because staff no longer have to guess a customer’s age and randomly challenge them. Now they can just blame the technology! Tim Ring
November/December 2018
banking
Microsoft and NAB pilot face-based cash machine
M
icrosoft has joined forces with Australian bank NAB to design a proof-of-concept automatic teller machine (ATM) that allows customers to use their face to identify themselves and withdraw cash, with no need for a physical card. The aim is to speed up the ATM process and cut card fraud and skimming crime. The system uses a Microsoft Azure cloud-based application to verify customers who opt into the service, allowing them to withdraw cash from a machine using just facial recognition technology and a PIN. Microsoft Australia managing director Steven Worrall said: “Cloud computing and artificial intelligence present the opportunity for a new generation of secure, streamlined financial services. We believe AI will profoundly impact financial services and the sorts of solutions that banks will be able to deliver.” NAB chief technology officer Patrick Wright said there is a “need for banks to be simpler and faster for our customers. This concept is a look into what the future might hold for the way our customers access banking products and services.” The concept system was developed in approximately two months. It does not store images on the local ATM machine, these are held on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The biometric data used during the trial will be erased when it finishes. 12
Biometric Technology Today
privacy
Orlando police defy protest to use Rekognition
T
he Orlando police department in Florida has decided to keep testing Amazon’s Rekognition face system, defying civil liberties protests that police are using the ‘dragnet’ software for unregulated mass surveillance. On 18 October, Orlando announced that it will press ahead with a nine-month trial of the software. But this will be confined to Rekognition scanning the live feeds from eight cameras to identify only volunteer police officers and no members of the public. This follows Orlando’s decision back in June to temporarily stop testing Rekognition, when an initial six-month trial ended. At the time the city
was under pressure after the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and 35 other campaign groups accused Rekognition in May of dangerous mass surveillance. In July, ACLU also claimed that the Amazon system had wrongly indentified 28 members of the US Congress as criminals. Orlando’s latest decision to re-start trials is a fillip to Amazon. But Rekognition is still causing controversy. In October an anonymous Amazon employee told the Medium website that over 450 co-workers had written to CEO Jeff Bezos, demanding that Amazon “immediately” stop selling Rekognition to police departments across the US. The staff also demanded that Palantir – a software firm helping US government efforts to track and deport illegal immigrants – should be removed from Amazon Web Services and that Amazon should “institute employee oversight for ethical decisions”. So far, the employee said, they had received no response from Bezos. Rekognition is claimed to be able to store and search tens of millions of faces at a time.
COMMENT This issue we cover some good examples of biometric tech where vendors have found creative ways past the ‘Big Brother mass surveillance’ concerns that can hold adoption back. RealNetworks is one. This US firm hit the headlines in the summer when it offered its SAFR facial recognition technology (FRT) free to up to 100,000 schools in the US and Canada – as a way of protecting their students from random shooting attacks. The offer attracted some negative comment, and privacy campaigners focused on the suggestion that SAFR was offering unregulated mass surveillance technology to monitor children. The company has now responded positively to this by issuing best-practice guidelines for schools interested in its software. These cover everything from consent to security; they highlight that face systems should have built-in privacy features like encryption, there should be clear communication with parents, staff and students from the early project stages, and all stakeholders should be told precisely what data will be collected and how it will be used. It’s probably no coincidence that the advice matches the key elements of Europe’s new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) law, which defines best practice
in securing personal data. Elsewhere, we report on a sensitive application of fingerprint technology, to help possible victims of the AIDS disease in South Africa. A non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Shout It Now is using the biometric system to get round the problem that, through social stigma, many people at risk of AIDS refuse to be tested because they have to give their identification details. Shout It Now is using technology from Idversol and Integrated Biometrics to take people’s fingerprints, then create a private identifier for that person. That way, they can remain anonymous until they know their HIV status and can make decisions regarding treatment. This approach has almost tripled the rate of people taking tests. Finally, we feature NCR and Yoti who are working on an FRT system for US and UK supermarkets, that uses facial recognition to verify whether people buying products like cigarettes and alcohol are actually old enough to do so. The suppliers say the good outcome of their system is that it reduces confrontations at the checkout between supermarket staff and shoppers – because staff no longer have to guess a customer’s age and randomly challenge them. Now they can just blame the technology! Tim Ring
November/December 2018