• Growing problem in Canada: stolen passports

    On average, 1,000 Canadian passports are stolen across Canada every month; in FY2009-10, 13,077 passports were stolen in Canada; by comparison, only 631 were swiped overseas; another 47,704 passports were reported lost in Canada; late next year, Passport Canada will begin distributing e-Passports to the general public

  • Biometric CCTV market to hit $3.2 billion in 2016

    Analysts project that the biometric CCTV market will be a $3.2 billion industry by 2016, with an annual growth rate of 33 percent; the security camera industry has already seen rapid growth as the private and public sector have installed surveillance systems to help combat crime and provide real-time information; over the next decade, analysts from the Homeland Security Research Corporation (HSRC) project that the next trend in this field will be the increasing integration of biometric technology into surveillance cameras; HSRC’s report projects that these technological developments will help drive the CCTV market and create significant growth opportunities for the security camera industry, biometric and IT systems manufacturers, and security systems integrators

  • New York proposes biometric IDs to combat Medicaid fraud

    New York lawmakers are currently considering a bill that is aimed at reducing Medicaid fraud by requiring all patients to carry biometric ID cards; under the proposed law all Medicaid recipients would receive a special card that contains their biometric data from a palm scan that must be presented to receive service; installing the card readers and issuing the identity cards would cost an estimated $20 million, but could result in as much as a $5 billion reduction in Medicaid fraud each year; the legislation could set off a debate about privacy concerns

  • Critics: Trusted Traveler will allow Mexican cartels to bypass airport security

    Two weeks ago DHS announced plans the roll out of Trusted Traveler program with Mexico; under the program, Mexicans who have undergone background checks and are deemed low security risks will be able to fly into major U.S. cities and breeze through customs without being questioned by U.S. Customs agents; critics say Mexico’s drug cartels will quickly learn how to exploit loopholes in the plan by recruiting Mexicans with clean backgrounds to attain trusted traveler status, and then use them to smuggle drugs and other contraband into the United States; Mexican citizens are already eligible for expedited land border crossings through another trusted traveler program, Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection (SENTRI); last week, two SENTRI trusted travelers were caught trying to bring contraband across the border into the U.S. through the SENTRI-only express border passage

    • view counter

  • New opportunities for biometrics and smart cards

    The biometric microprocessor card market is growing by leaps and bounds; the microprocessor smart card market will hit 5.32 billion units shipped in 2010 and rise to 6.02 billion units in 2011; the growth owes to rising sales of e-ID cards, especially from the European residence permit, and growth in e-services for citizens

  • Spain busts terrorist passport-stealing ring

    Spanish police have arrested seven men suspected of having links to a Pakistani militant group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks; the six Pakistanis and one north African are believed to be part of European network based in Barcelona that stole passports to order for the “World Islamic Front” a group connected to al Qaeda; members of the theft ring were tasked with stealing 40 passports a month, and they stole the passports from those whose age and nationality would best enable terrorists to use the falsified documents to travel freely across borders; the group sent the passports to be forged in Thailand from where they were distributed to criminal groups around the world including radical Islamic cells

    • view counter

  • SIA releases guidelines for bringing biometrics to E-Verify

    The Security Industry Association, a trade group representing businesses in electronic and physical security, has released suggested guidelines for adding biometrics to the federal E-Verify federal resident verification program

  • FAA to require photos, but no biometric info, on pilot's licenses

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed that all pilot certificates include a photo of the licensee, but one lawmaker wants to know why the passport-size cards will not include biometric identification five years after Congress passed a law requiring such unique identifiers

  • Fees for federal immigration docs to increases

    On 23 November the prices of most federal immigration documents, including green card replacements, are scheduled to increase; someone seeking to replace a green card, for example, will pay $450 under the new fee schedule, instead of $370

  • New U.S. naturalization documents more secure

    The new computerized naturalization certificates will have all that information embedded in the document and also will have ink patterns that are harder to duplicate; the new green cards have more security features, including a personalized holographic image, a laser-engraved fingerprint of the person, and improved identification technology

  • Multiple-biometric IDs to become a reality in India

    India’s government now issues multiple special-purpose IDs, including a Permanent Account Number for income tax transactions, an Electors Photo Identity Card for voting, ration cards, health care cards, driver’s licenses, and passports; India’s Aadhaar program, referred to as the UID, will eventually replace all of those. The UID system will process hundreds of thousands of identity validation requests each second, against the world’s largest database of individuals

  • India embarks on ambitious biometric project: 1.2 billion IDs

    Yesterday India officially launched the world’s most ambitious biometrics project: assigning a unique 12-digit number to each of the country’s 1.2 billion people; the project, which seeks to collect fingerprint and iris scans from all residents and store them in a massive central database of unique IDs, is considered by many specialists the most technologically and logistically complex national identification effort ever attempted; the government says unique ID numbers will help ensure that government welfare spending reaches the right people, and will allow hundreds of millions of poor Indians to access services like banking for the first time

  • LaserCard to supply additional optical security cards for Italy's Carta d'Identita Elettronica

    The optical security media cards from Mountain View, California-based LaserCard are already used in the U.S. Green Card, the Saudi Arabian and Angolan National ID Cards, the Costa Rica Foreign Resident Card, the Hungarian Professional Driver License, and vehicle registration programs for three state authorities in India; Italy used them in its Carta d’Identita Elettronica, and it orders more of them

  • New identity theft scheme: stealing kids' Social Security numbers

    The latest identity theft scheme: stealing kids’ Social Security numbers years before these kids grow up to use these numbers; the scheme allows people to establish phony credit and run up huge debts — debts that the kids may never be able to pay off

  • EU biometric passports not that safe, experts say

    The EU’s e-passports were supposed to be fool-proof, even impossible to counterfeit; Europol has warned, though, that despite the biometric changes to passports, counterfeiting still remains a major problem for criminals or others “who are determined to do so,” with the provision of documents for irregular immigrants being the main driver of the activity