• Arizona police deploy iris scanners and facial biometrics to identify inmates

    Local police departments in Arizona have begun using facial biometrics and iris scanning technology to identify inmates and registered sex offenders; officers with the Pinal County Sheriff’s department have entered roughly 1,500 inmates and 700 sex offenders into a national database to better identify, register, and track inmates; the scans come as part of a broader effort led by the National Sheriff’s Association (NSA) and the U.S. Justice Department; beginning in 2009, the Justice Department awarded $500,000 to help roughly forty-five law enforcement agencies throughout the United States to purchase iris scanners from BI2 Technologies

  • Morpho's fingerprint algorithms win

    Morpho (Safran group) the other day announced that its fingerprint recognition algorithms have been ranked number one in the two most recent National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) MINEX II (Match-on-Card) and Ongoing MINEX revaluations; the company says its algorithms excelled in both accuracy and interoperability under all conditions

  • Malaysia begins fingerprinting all visitors

    Under a new trial program, next month the government of Malaysia will begin scanning the fingerprints of all travellers entering and exiting the country to help combat international crime and terrorism; the program, dubbed the Biometric Fingerprint Security System, is aimed at reducing fraud from the current screening method which involves a security official matching a traveller’s face to their passport photo; 3 percent of the 24.4 million foreigners who visited Malaysia last year were involved in crimes; biometric scanners are currently being installed at sixty-one of Malaysia’s ninety-six ports of entry, and the trial program will begin 1 June