• Facebook facial recognition proving problematic overseas

    A German court ruled that Facebook’s facial recognition software is in violation of German and European privacy laws; the company has until 7 November to amend its software to comply with German and EU laws or else it will face legal action

  • Collaborative social media site for ID and biometric professionals

    Cost overruns, project delays, and poor performance results have long been the bane of government projects, at times resulting in expensive high-profile failures; to help reduce costs and ensure that government projects meet targeted needs, a new collaborative Web-based information-sharing community aimed at bringing together identity and biometric industry professionals, academics, researchers, and government and commercial procurement officers is slated to open

  • Detecting criminals coming back to the scene of the crime

    Law enforcement officials believe that perpetrators of certain crimes, most notably arson, do come back to the scene of the crime to witness their handiwork; similarly, U.S. military in the Middle East feel that improvised explosive device (IED) bomb makers return to see the results of their work in order to evolve their designs; scientists have developed a method to identify these individuals

  • Major breakthroughs in facial recognition, cause for concern?

    Technological advances could soon make identifying an individual in a crowd as simple as taking a photo with a smartphone; researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College have developed PittPatt, a software tool that can take a snapshot of a person and track down their real identity in a matter of minutes

  • Voice-recognition market to reach $58.4 billion in 2015

    New report says the voice recognition technologies market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.8 percent between 2010 and 2015; the total market is valued at an estimated $38.4 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach $58.4 billion in 2015; this growth will spur additional growth in two sub-markets: voice recognition software technologies and text-to-speech software

  • M2SYS's Hybrid Biometric Platform offers flexibility

    The biometric recognition market lacks enterprise-ready, customizable, device-independent systems that allow organizations of any size to avoid being limited to one biometric modality or a single biometric device; Frost & Sullivan says M2SYS’s Hybrid Biometric Platform addresses this problem

  • Innometrik, Lumidigm integrate technologies

    Lumidigm says that Innometriks’ Rhino reader, which combines embedded Lumidigm fingerprint biometrics, smart cards, PKI, and digital signature technologies, is now handling high security applications in extreme weather and rough environments for several organizations of the U.S. Department of Defense

  • SmartMetric set to release new biometric smart card

    In the first quarter of 2012, SmartMetric, Inc. plans to unveil its newest SmartCard, which is the size of a standard credit card but has the ability to record fingerprint biometrics to ensure the highest level of security in financial transactions

  • iBeta becomes NIST approved biometrics test lab

    With the increasing ubiquity of biometrics in everything from airport scanners, laptops, cell phones, hospitals, and vehicles, iBeta Quality Assurance recently gained official certification to test new biometric technologies

  • AOptix shows dual iris-face scanner

    AOptix is showing the latest addition to its family of biometric products, the InSight Duo, which the company describes as “the world’s first biometric system with simultaneous ISO standards-compliant iris and face capture”

  • New technology detects altered fingerprints

    The widespread use of fingerprint recognition systems has led some individuals to disfigure or surgically change their fingerprints to mask their identities; new technology can help law enforcement and border control officials detect these altered fingerprints

  • Researchers developing "soft biometric" video analysis system

    Researchers in Australia are developing a way to identify individuals using “soft” biometrics like their estimated weight, hair color, and skin tone in video footage; the researchers hope to create a Google-style search, where police officers can actually search for an individual in hundreds of hours of video footage just by typing in a basic description

  • Gait biometrics shows promise

    A new biometric technology may soon join retinal scans, voice recognition, and fingerprints as a means to identify individuals: gait pattern biometrics; a method of identifying individuals by the way they walk, saunter, swagger, or sashay has achieved accuracy of about 90 percent in early trials

  • Fingerprint biometrics help secure medical data at Arizona hospitals

    As more healthcare networks begin storing patient records electronically, they have become increasingly concerned with security and many are turning to biometrics; a healthcare provider in Southern Arizona recently introduced fingerprint biometrics at its facilities to help secure patient records and increase efficiency

  • Businesses customizing ads with facial biometrics

    In a futuristic turn, some advertisers have already begun customizing their digital ads to whoever passes by using facial recognition software; so far the Venetian resort in Las Vegas, Nevada has been the first to adopt this technology in the United States; the resort has installed cameras with facial recognition technologies near their digital displays to customize restaurant and entertainment suggestions for individuals passing by