NEWS
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Biometric Technology Today
...Top Story continued from page 1 The Face.com acquisition comes as privacy concerns have been raised about Apple’s storage of the voice biometrics of people using its Siri voice recognition engine on its servers. The fear is that sensitive information is stored in a voice form, which may be authenticated to lend credence to the information. This type of biometrically validated information could be required by a court of law for example. Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, confirmed to Mashable that voice recordings are stored when users ask a spoken question like “What’s the weather now?”, noting that questions and responses that Siri sends over the Internet are encrypted, and that recordings of a person’s voice are not linked to other information Apple has generated about them. According to Technology Review, IBM requires its employees bringing Siri-enabled iPhones to work, to switch off Siri, in case they reveal sensitive information.
privacy ...Continued from page 1 This comes as European data protection authorities have formally adopted a further ‘Opinion’ on developments in biometric technologies. The Article 29 Working Party on the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Processing of Personal Data has issued an opinion that provides an updated legal analysis of the use of biometric data and best practice recommendations. This may be accessed at http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/ article-29/documentation/opinion-recommendation/files/2012/wp192_en.pdf The opinion develops the working party’s previous opinion on biometrics and considers the legal framework. It provides recommendations applicable to facial recognition technology when used in the context of online and mobile services and addresses the issue of informed consent. It comments, “Technological progress has made storage space and computing power cheaper. This has made online picture galleries and social networks containing billions of photographs possible, allowed fingerprint readers and video surveillance devices to become inexpensive gadgets and made DNA analysis faster and more affordable. “Where such commonly available biometric technologies are used without adequate safeguards the right to data protection of the concerned individual is at risk. In addition, many types of biometric data can be collected without the individual’s co-operation or knowledge, such as through video surveillance and facial recognition systems, and many violations could occur unnoticed.”
These benefits, risks and other recent developments are addressed in the opinion.
interoperability
US government and industry work on interoperability
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S defence and law enforcement agencies are to meet to thrash out issues of interoperability in biometric systems. The IJIS Institute, a non-profit organisation that focuses on mission critical information sharing for justice, public safety, and homeland security, leads the initiative. It has formed a joint government industry panel to identify challenges in interoperability between biometric-based products and systems. In a press release it states: “In spite of significant progress in the development of national and international biometric standards, many interoperability problems still remain. This panel will be a major catalyst for enhancing biometric interoperability in specific context areas that have fallen short in meeting interoperability goals.” The panel will first meet as part of BIGSIG (Biometrics Industry Government Standards and Interoperability Group) subcommittee of Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Programs Advisory Committee (CPAC) on 28 July 2012 to explore various perspectives on the challenges of and future for improving biometrics interoperability. The CPAC comprises IJIS Institute member companies, as well as FBI representatives. Representatives from the FBI, US Visit, National Security Agency, Department of State, Department of Defense (Biometrics Identity Management Agency), and state and local governments have been invited to represent government. Also invited are members of relevant standards organisations. For more information, visit www.IJIS.org.
industry
North America leads biometric technology market
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esearchers have found that North America is leading the biometric technology market According to a new market research report ‘Next Generation Biometric Technologies Market – Global Forecast & Analysis (20122017)’ published by MarketsandMarkets, the
July/August 2012