- Email: [email protected]
University develops ID system using ear canal
NEWS ...Continued from page 3 for dragnet surveillance of Californians, our locations, and our personal associations.” In June, body camera supplier Axon also announced that it would not add facial recognition to its body camera systems until ethical issues were resolved. And in April, Microsoft said it had turned down a request from a law enforcement agency in California to use its facial recognition technology with police body cameras, citing human rights concerns.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon: “Lots of potential for abuses with facial recognition technology, so you do want regulations.”
camera technology
Chinese unveil ‘super camera’
C
hinese scientists have developed a 500 megapixel facial recognition camera that is four times more powerful than the human eye and can capture every face in crowds of tens of thousands of people. The camera was developed by researchers at Shanghai’s Fudan University and the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, according to China’s Global Times news service and Asia Times. It was first shown at China’s International Industry Fair last month. According to the reports, the camera can capture extremely detailed images. For example, in a stadium with tens of thousands of people, it can shoot a panoramic photo with a clear image of every face and find specific target faces within seconds. Global Times also said the camera system can create videos with the same ultra-high resolution as still images, using two special chips developed by the research team. The videos and images captured can also be uploaded to a cloud data centre for wide access. Experts say the camera could be used in national defence, military and public security applications. For example, Asia Times reports Zeng Xiaoyang, one of the camera’s developers, as saying it could be used to monitor city centre crowds in real time to prevent criminal activity. The development has inevitably raised privacy and mass surveillance concerns. China has led the way in mass surveillance, with an esti-
October 2019
mated 200 million CCTV cameras installed. However, in one area it is now stepping back from intense surveillance – the Chinese government announced last month that it plans to “curb and regulate” the use of facial recognition technology in its schools, according to the BBC, quoting Chinese media sources. China’s Ministry of Education made the pledge after a university in Nanjing was recently reported to be trialling facial recognition technology to monitor its students’ attendance and behaviour. This attracted online criticism – and follows the widely reported news last year that a high school in Hangzhou, eastern China had installed surveillance cameras above a blackboard to monitor how attentive its students were in class. Lei Chaozi, director of science and technology at China’s Ministry of Education, has promised a crackdown on such usage, according to the BBC. “We need to be very careful when it comes to students’ personal information,” he said. “Don’t collect it if it’s not necessary. And try to collect as little as possible if we have to.” The Ministry of Education has issued new guidance saying education authorities and schools should seek the opinions of parents, students and teachers before introducing new technology, and should register any new apps being used, to build a database for better supervision, the BBC says.
fingerprinting
Biometric gun holsters go on sale
N
ew York-based Vara Safety has started shipping a range of ‘Reach’ biometric gun holsters, which aim to stop anyone except the owner getting hold of the weapon. The Reach sealed units are made of a highstrength metal alloy and are designed to be wall-mounted in the owner’s home, office or vehicle. They use a built-in fingerprint sensor which identifies the person trying to unlock the holster and take out the firearm. Vara is now shipping the Reach units to more than 400 pre-order customers. The company also said it is in talks with several industry leaders to expand production, and expects to ship thousands of the locally assembled holster safes. Vara says it focuses on “creating beautiful, simple and highly engineered products and services that bring better gun security for families”. The company quotes figures from the Injury Free Coalition for Kids, which found that 50% of handguns in the US are stored loaded or with the ammunition, and that children
are 73% less at risk of unintentional injury when they live in a household with locked and unloaded guns. It also quotes figures suggesting around 100 children aged under 20 die from unintentional firearm-related injuries annually. Company founder and CEO Timmy Oh said: “We will be focusing future development on our core technology application to safety in law enforcement, suicide prevention, pharmaceutical storage, smart homes and more.” Oh previously won $100,000 in a New York State Business Plan competition and has secured financial backing for his products from New York City’s Purritano Management.
innovation
University develops ID system using ear canal
A
research team from the US University at Buffalo (UB) have come up with a novel biometric authentication technique, called EarEcho, which identifies people via their ear canal’s unique geometry. UB associate professor Zhanpeng Jin, who led the research, said he was inspired by the fact that so many students walk around with speakers in their ears. “It led me to wonder what else we could do with them,” he said. Jin, who is associate professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, set up a team who have developed EarEcho. The product uses modified wireless ‘earbuds’ to authenticate smartphone users. EarEcho works by playing a sound into the individual’s ear using a pair of ordinary headphones, which is reflected and absorbed by the ear canal. This produces a unique signature which is recorded by a tiny microphone attached to the earbud. The data is then sent via Bluetooth to the user’s smartphone for verification. The research team also developed acoustic signal processing techniques to limit noise interference, and models to share information between EarEcho’s components. To test the device, 20 subjects listened to audio samples that included a variety of speech, music and other content. The team conducted tests in different environmental settings (such as on the street and in a shopping mall) and with the subjects in different positions (such as sitting, standing, head tilted). EarEcho proved roughly 95% effective when given one second to authenticate the subjects. The score improved to 97.5% when it continued to monitor the subject in three-second windows. Continued on page 12...
Biometric Technology Today
11
NEWS/COMMENT ...Contined from page 11 Jin explained: “It doesn’t matter what the sound is, everyone’s ears are different and we can show that in the audio recording. This uniqueness can lead to a new way of confirming the identity of the user, equivalent to fingerprinting.” The researchers believe EarEcho could be used to unlock smartphones, but Jin sees its greatest potential use in continuously monitoring smartphone users. EarEcho works when users are listening to their earbuds, so it is a passive system. This means users need not take any action, such as submitting a fingerprint or voice command, for it to work. Such a system, Jin argues, is ideal for situations where users are required to verify their identity such as making mobile payments. It could also eliminate the need to re-enter passcodes or fingerprints when a phone locks up after not being used. A prototype of the system was described in last month’s Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies journal. UB’s Technology Transfer office has filed a provisional patent application for the technology. Additional co-authors of the study include Yang Gao and Wei Wang, both graduate students in Jin’s lab; Wei Sun, associate professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences; and Vir V Phoha, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Syracuse University. Zhanpeng Jin: what else could you do with speakers? Credit: University at Buffalo.
surveillance technology
US seeks long-range biometrics
A
merica’s IARPA intelligence agency is looking to develop new longrange biometric surveillance systems. In an RFI (request for information) issued on 13 September, IARPA invited responses from biometric tech suppliers for its BRIAR – Biometric Recognition and Identification at Altitude and Range – project, with a response date of 21 October. The aim is to research and develop facial and related recognition systems that can be deployed from rooftops or unmanned aerial vehicles like drones. Initially, IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) says it is “seeking 12
Biometric Technology Today
information on research efforts and datasets that may be useful in planning a programme focused on advancing the state-of-the-art of biometric recognition and identification at altitude and range”. The agency explained: “There have been notable advances in computer vision and biometric approaches to facilitate unconstrained face recognition. However, there remain challenges in diverse face identification when dealing with low-resolution or noisy imagery (eg, motion blur, atmospheric turbulence). In addition, limited research has been performed on face recognition using imagery captured at high camera pitch angles, such as those collected from security cameras on building tops or from airborne platforms, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).” IARPA says its main aim is to research systems that could protect critical infrastructure and military forces, and support border security. “Examples may include (but not limited
to) whole-body identification, gait recognition and/or anthropomorphic classification (eg, height, gender). The fusion of multiple biometric signatures to address these limitations remains under-served by the research community,” IARPA said. The information it wants to source is biometric research datasets that: • Include imagery captured at long-range (over 300 metres) or severe pitch angles (more than 20 degrees). • Capture images using UAVs like quadcopters or fix-wing platforms. • Include whole-body video imagery. IARPA also wants to hear from organisations that have conducted research on multi-modal fused biometric identification (such as face and gait recognition) in standoff scenarios – meaning ranges greater than 20 metres from sensor to subject.
COMMENT There’s talk these days of politicians in the West retreating into their own ‘tribes’: Democrats and Republicans in the US becoming increasingly hard-line; members of Parliament in the UK becoming increasingly insulting and unyielding to each other’s point of view. Whether that’s true or not, a phase or not, the same impression holds in the area of biometric technology and especially facial recognition. Privacy and civil rights campaigners on the one hand condemn the technology and call for an outright ban on video mass surveillance. On the other side of the fence, biometric tech and law enforcement advocates emphasise its ability to cut crime. Last month it was the turn of the biometrics industry to put its case, when a coalition of some 40 technology companies, law enforcement groups and individuals sent an open letter to the US Congress opposing an outright ban on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement. The industry voices include Acuant, Cognitec, HID Global, the IJIS Institute, the IBIA (International Biometrics + Identity Association), JENETRIC, NEC, Thales and Vision-Box. Their letter points up the recent rapid improvements in FR systems, and how the technology is being used “to help identify individuals involved in crimes, find missing children and combat sex trafficking”. They ask Congress to consider
the “viable alternatives” to a ban, including setting performance standards, and offering guidance and additional training for law enforcement officers. They also point out that polls consistently show Americans trust law enforcement to use facial recognition technology responsibly. That claim is supported, and extended, by an Ipsos survey we cover this issue (page 2), which found that citizens globally support government use of facial recognition – with limits. The survey of some 20,000 people across 26 countries found that supporters of a total ban on FR were a minority in all the countries involved. A majority of citizens in all 26 supported the limited government use of AI and facial recognition. In that same spirit, we report on page 1 how Detroit has bucked the trend of other US cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley: instead of an outright ban on FR, Detroit has allowed its police force to keep using the technology. But there are strict safeguards. Detroit police can only access still images, not the city’s CCTV camera network. They can use FR technology to investigate only serious crimes like sexual assault, murder and home invasions. They are not allowed to search based on an individual’s race or gender, nor use FR to assess a person’s immigration status. This (middle) ground-breaking move offers a practical way forward for cities to get past partisanship, and securely use FR technology to combat crime. Tim Ring
October 2019
Jeff Bezos, Amazon: “Lots of potential for abuses with facial recognition technology, so you do want regulations.”
camera technology
Chinese unveil ‘super camera’
C
hinese scientists have developed a 500 megapixel facial recognition camera that is four times more powerful than the human eye and can capture every face in crowds of tens of thousands of people. The camera was developed by researchers at Shanghai’s Fudan University and the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, according to China’s Global Times news service and Asia Times. It was first shown at China’s International Industry Fair last month. According to the reports, the camera can capture extremely detailed images. For example, in a stadium with tens of thousands of people, it can shoot a panoramic photo with a clear image of every face and find specific target faces within seconds. Global Times also said the camera system can create videos with the same ultra-high resolution as still images, using two special chips developed by the research team. The videos and images captured can also be uploaded to a cloud data centre for wide access. Experts say the camera could be used in national defence, military and public security applications. For example, Asia Times reports Zeng Xiaoyang, one of the camera’s developers, as saying it could be used to monitor city centre crowds in real time to prevent criminal activity. The development has inevitably raised privacy and mass surveillance concerns. China has led the way in mass surveillance, with an esti-
October 2019
mated 200 million CCTV cameras installed. However, in one area it is now stepping back from intense surveillance – the Chinese government announced last month that it plans to “curb and regulate” the use of facial recognition technology in its schools, according to the BBC, quoting Chinese media sources. China’s Ministry of Education made the pledge after a university in Nanjing was recently reported to be trialling facial recognition technology to monitor its students’ attendance and behaviour. This attracted online criticism – and follows the widely reported news last year that a high school in Hangzhou, eastern China had installed surveillance cameras above a blackboard to monitor how attentive its students were in class. Lei Chaozi, director of science and technology at China’s Ministry of Education, has promised a crackdown on such usage, according to the BBC. “We need to be very careful when it comes to students’ personal information,” he said. “Don’t collect it if it’s not necessary. And try to collect as little as possible if we have to.” The Ministry of Education has issued new guidance saying education authorities and schools should seek the opinions of parents, students and teachers before introducing new technology, and should register any new apps being used, to build a database for better supervision, the BBC says.
fingerprinting
Biometric gun holsters go on sale
N
ew York-based Vara Safety has started shipping a range of ‘Reach’ biometric gun holsters, which aim to stop anyone except the owner getting hold of the weapon. The Reach sealed units are made of a highstrength metal alloy and are designed to be wall-mounted in the owner’s home, office or vehicle. They use a built-in fingerprint sensor which identifies the person trying to unlock the holster and take out the firearm. Vara is now shipping the Reach units to more than 400 pre-order customers. The company also said it is in talks with several industry leaders to expand production, and expects to ship thousands of the locally assembled holster safes. Vara says it focuses on “creating beautiful, simple and highly engineered products and services that bring better gun security for families”. The company quotes figures from the Injury Free Coalition for Kids, which found that 50% of handguns in the US are stored loaded or with the ammunition, and that children
are 73% less at risk of unintentional injury when they live in a household with locked and unloaded guns. It also quotes figures suggesting around 100 children aged under 20 die from unintentional firearm-related injuries annually. Company founder and CEO Timmy Oh said: “We will be focusing future development on our core technology application to safety in law enforcement, suicide prevention, pharmaceutical storage, smart homes and more.” Oh previously won $100,000 in a New York State Business Plan competition and has secured financial backing for his products from New York City’s Purritano Management.
innovation
University develops ID system using ear canal
A
research team from the US University at Buffalo (UB) have come up with a novel biometric authentication technique, called EarEcho, which identifies people via their ear canal’s unique geometry. UB associate professor Zhanpeng Jin, who led the research, said he was inspired by the fact that so many students walk around with speakers in their ears. “It led me to wonder what else we could do with them,” he said. Jin, who is associate professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, set up a team who have developed EarEcho. The product uses modified wireless ‘earbuds’ to authenticate smartphone users. EarEcho works by playing a sound into the individual’s ear using a pair of ordinary headphones, which is reflected and absorbed by the ear canal. This produces a unique signature which is recorded by a tiny microphone attached to the earbud. The data is then sent via Bluetooth to the user’s smartphone for verification. The research team also developed acoustic signal processing techniques to limit noise interference, and models to share information between EarEcho’s components. To test the device, 20 subjects listened to audio samples that included a variety of speech, music and other content. The team conducted tests in different environmental settings (such as on the street and in a shopping mall) and with the subjects in different positions (such as sitting, standing, head tilted). EarEcho proved roughly 95% effective when given one second to authenticate the subjects. The score improved to 97.5% when it continued to monitor the subject in three-second windows. Continued on page 12...
Biometric Technology Today
11
NEWS/COMMENT ...Contined from page 11 Jin explained: “It doesn’t matter what the sound is, everyone’s ears are different and we can show that in the audio recording. This uniqueness can lead to a new way of confirming the identity of the user, equivalent to fingerprinting.” The researchers believe EarEcho could be used to unlock smartphones, but Jin sees its greatest potential use in continuously monitoring smartphone users. EarEcho works when users are listening to their earbuds, so it is a passive system. This means users need not take any action, such as submitting a fingerprint or voice command, for it to work. Such a system, Jin argues, is ideal for situations where users are required to verify their identity such as making mobile payments. It could also eliminate the need to re-enter passcodes or fingerprints when a phone locks up after not being used. A prototype of the system was described in last month’s Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies journal. UB’s Technology Transfer office has filed a provisional patent application for the technology. Additional co-authors of the study include Yang Gao and Wei Wang, both graduate students in Jin’s lab; Wei Sun, associate professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences; and Vir V Phoha, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Syracuse University. Zhanpeng Jin: what else could you do with speakers? Credit: University at Buffalo.
surveillance technology
US seeks long-range biometrics
A
merica’s IARPA intelligence agency is looking to develop new longrange biometric surveillance systems. In an RFI (request for information) issued on 13 September, IARPA invited responses from biometric tech suppliers for its BRIAR – Biometric Recognition and Identification at Altitude and Range – project, with a response date of 21 October. The aim is to research and develop facial and related recognition systems that can be deployed from rooftops or unmanned aerial vehicles like drones. Initially, IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) says it is “seeking 12
Biometric Technology Today
information on research efforts and datasets that may be useful in planning a programme focused on advancing the state-of-the-art of biometric recognition and identification at altitude and range”. The agency explained: “There have been notable advances in computer vision and biometric approaches to facilitate unconstrained face recognition. However, there remain challenges in diverse face identification when dealing with low-resolution or noisy imagery (eg, motion blur, atmospheric turbulence). In addition, limited research has been performed on face recognition using imagery captured at high camera pitch angles, such as those collected from security cameras on building tops or from airborne platforms, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).” IARPA says its main aim is to research systems that could protect critical infrastructure and military forces, and support border security. “Examples may include (but not limited
to) whole-body identification, gait recognition and/or anthropomorphic classification (eg, height, gender). The fusion of multiple biometric signatures to address these limitations remains under-served by the research community,” IARPA said. The information it wants to source is biometric research datasets that: • Include imagery captured at long-range (over 300 metres) or severe pitch angles (more than 20 degrees). • Capture images using UAVs like quadcopters or fix-wing platforms. • Include whole-body video imagery. IARPA also wants to hear from organisations that have conducted research on multi-modal fused biometric identification (such as face and gait recognition) in standoff scenarios – meaning ranges greater than 20 metres from sensor to subject.
COMMENT There’s talk these days of politicians in the West retreating into their own ‘tribes’: Democrats and Republicans in the US becoming increasingly hard-line; members of Parliament in the UK becoming increasingly insulting and unyielding to each other’s point of view. Whether that’s true or not, a phase or not, the same impression holds in the area of biometric technology and especially facial recognition. Privacy and civil rights campaigners on the one hand condemn the technology and call for an outright ban on video mass surveillance. On the other side of the fence, biometric tech and law enforcement advocates emphasise its ability to cut crime. Last month it was the turn of the biometrics industry to put its case, when a coalition of some 40 technology companies, law enforcement groups and individuals sent an open letter to the US Congress opposing an outright ban on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement. The industry voices include Acuant, Cognitec, HID Global, the IJIS Institute, the IBIA (International Biometrics + Identity Association), JENETRIC, NEC, Thales and Vision-Box. Their letter points up the recent rapid improvements in FR systems, and how the technology is being used “to help identify individuals involved in crimes, find missing children and combat sex trafficking”. They ask Congress to consider
the “viable alternatives” to a ban, including setting performance standards, and offering guidance and additional training for law enforcement officers. They also point out that polls consistently show Americans trust law enforcement to use facial recognition technology responsibly. That claim is supported, and extended, by an Ipsos survey we cover this issue (page 2), which found that citizens globally support government use of facial recognition – with limits. The survey of some 20,000 people across 26 countries found that supporters of a total ban on FR were a minority in all the countries involved. A majority of citizens in all 26 supported the limited government use of AI and facial recognition. In that same spirit, we report on page 1 how Detroit has bucked the trend of other US cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley: instead of an outright ban on FR, Detroit has allowed its police force to keep using the technology. But there are strict safeguards. Detroit police can only access still images, not the city’s CCTV camera network. They can use FR technology to investigate only serious crimes like sexual assault, murder and home invasions. They are not allowed to search based on an individual’s race or gender, nor use FR to assess a person’s immigration status. This (middle) ground-breaking move offers a practical way forward for cities to get past partisanship, and securely use FR technology to combat crime. Tim Ring
October 2019