• 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

  • Products block unauthorized RFID reading of contactless cards

    More and more countries and organizations move toward adopting RFID-enabled, biometric e-IDs — driver’s licenses, passports, national IDs, and more; trouble is, these e-documents are susceptible to digital pickpocketing; a U.K. company offers solutions

  • 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

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  • 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

  • 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

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  • 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

  • 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

  • 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”

  • 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

  • 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

  • ID scheme looks at gaining access

    Australia’s Centrelink agency has around 26,000 employees and administered more than $70 billion in payments and services to millions of customers annually; the agency has just developed a a more reliable ID authentication solution

  • 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)

  • South Africa: Intelleca awarded voice biometrics contract

    South African leading network operator awards Intelleca large voice recognition contract; the operator plans to implement the solution across a range of business areas in its contact center

  • In the U.K., CCTVs replace security guards

    Newcastle-based U.K. Biometric sees 10-fold increase for its CCTV cameras which can be accessed via remote devices; company says building firms are turning to the technology as a cheaper and more efficient replacement to employing overnight security guards