• San Diego uses biometrics to identify and remove criminal aliens

    San Diego County Sheriff’s Department deputies are the first law enforcement unit in California to use DHS Secure Community program to receive biometric-based immigration information

  • Aussie Defense Department trials sneaky cameras

    One of the biggest shortcomings of facial recognition devices is the angle of image capture; DSTO is toying with “attractors” — lights and sounds emitting devices that draw the attention of passers-by so they inadvertently look directly into a camera

  • Biometric technologies improve, offering greater reliability

    Biometrics is not perfect — but it is improving; biometrics is developing along two lines — physical, which is often more intrusive for the user, and behavioral, which is usually less intrusive; Fujitsu’s Jerry Byrnes: “What was James Bond 15 years ago is biometric reality today”

  • Travelers exiting U.S. will have fingerprints scanned

    DHS relaunches a project to scan the fingerprints of international travelers leaving the united States; CBP will take fingerprints exiting the United States from Detroit, while TSA will do the same in Atlanta

  • Centerlink replaces PINs with voice recognition

    Australia’s welfare agency Centerlink has switched from PINs to voice recognition system to identify and manage clients; clients who routinely access self-service functions, such as lodging payment forms and updating the welfare agency with simple information about income, are most suitable for the system

  • Secure Flight launches today

    Secure Flight is the third version — you may recall CAPPS and CAPPS II — of the U.S. federal government’s decade-old effort to screen commercial airline passengers for risk against terrorist watch lists; it launches today

  • London airport in trials of facial recognition security

    Stansted Airport outside London is testing security gates with facial recognition software as the first part of an eventual roll out of the new security gates to ten more U.K. airports

  • UK Biometrics in talks with defense giant BAE

    UK Biometrics is in talks with global defense contracting giant BAE about using UK Biometrics systems to safeguard BAE ultra-security-sensitive production sites

  • Biometric scanners probes your brain to ID you

    EU-funded research project tests biometric technologies which will scan people’s brain waves and heart rate to identify them

  • iPod helps U.S. fight insurgents in Iraq

    The U.S. military is using iPods and iPhones to help troops carry out operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; devices are used for biometric identification, and will soon be used as guidance systems for bomb disposal robots and to receive aerial footage from unmanned drone aircraft

  • Canceling U.K. national ID scheme will save £400 million annually

    If start up costs of £300 million are included, the U.K. National Identity Scheme will, over a decade, cost government and citizens around £4.3 billion more than the cost of current passports

  • Britain to remove some DNA profiles from database

    About 5.2 percent of the U.K. population is on the national DNA database, compared with just 0.5 percent in the United States; the European Court of Human Rights rules that Britain’s DNA database is incompatible with the requirements of democracy, and the Home Office says it will begin to remove the DNA of innocent citizens

  • European Court: Scottish DNA database system is "fairer and proportionate"

    the European Court of Human Rights ruled the DNA databases in Britain, Wales, and Northern Ireland “could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society”; the European Court considered the system in Scotland “fair and proportionate”

  • Republican oppose Safran's FBI contract

    Republicans legislators express opposition to the FBI awarding a large biometric contract to French company Safran; the company is partly owned by the French government

  • Growing problem: Private security companies pose risk to privacy

    Government mandates in the U.K. now require more and more businesses to collect more and more information about individuals who use these businesses’ services; private contractors are hired to handled the collection and handling of the personal information collected; these contractors are not bound by the tight rules governing the government handling of such information (not that the U.K. government is doing a very good job following these rules)