Tag: biometrics

CEO of Worldcoin Says “Something Like World ID Will Eventually Exist…Whether You Like It Or Not”

Right now, it’s about those who voluntarily surrender their biometric data and receive “small sums” in Worldcoin in return for signing up to the World ID scheme.

But if Open AI CEO Sam Altman has anything to say about how Worldcoin, a project within his company, develops – everyone who wants to use the internet will eventually be required to use World ID – or “something like it.”

And right now, it seems that people in several southern European countries, notably Spain and Portugal, are simply itching to give away their iris biometrics as proof of identity and right to a cryptocurrency transfer wallet.

The signup process involves exposing your eyes to what’s known as Worldcoin’s Orb iris scanners. If reports are to be believed, the uptake in Spain, where the scheme first became available a year ago, is better than elsewhere – 150,000 participants in total, 20,000 new ones each day, and Barcelona is the place where a number of Orb scanners will be installed.

Portugal is not far behind, with 120,000 participants, and Germany is said to also be warming up to the project, ever since it started expanding two months ago.

All in all, some 2 million “biometric credentials” are now operated by Worldcoin. Why do people sign up for it?

“Something like World ID will eventually exist, meaning that you will need to verify [you are human] on the internet, whether you like it or not,” Blania said.

“Whether you like it or not” are the “sweet” words everyone does (not) like to hear in connections with something like that, but that is what Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania decided to go for when describing the future.

In it, according to Blania, digital ID will be so prevalent that it will become inevitable, and there will be no escaping verifying the quality of being human (and likely, quite a few more things) online – if one wants to be online at all.

And whether one “likes it or not.” Blania links it to “progress” in “AI,” and predicts this will be happening as soon as within a couple of years.

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Portland Goes Full China: Store Requires Looking at Camera to Enter

A convenience store in Portland, Oregon has implemented a digital face scan system that requires customers look at a camera before they are able to enter.

“Please look at the camera for entry,” a computerized voice says.

“Facial recognition in use,” the sign under the camera reads.

China has hundreds facial recognition stores.

It’s convenient to pay for your purchase with just your face, until your social credit score doesn’t permit you to enter the store.https://t.co/aTYt8eXuus pic.twitter.com/5FyxsZcR07

— Songpinganq (@songpinganq) July 10, 2023

The door remains locked until the customer consents and looks up at the camera.

Social media users have reacted to the development by drawing comparisons to China, which regularly requires citizens use facial recognition technology to access society. In communist China, citizens need to scan their face to buy products, and their social-credit scores get adjusted accordingly.

But with the democrat-run Portland having some of the highest crime rates in the United States, some stores have turned to the technology to save their businesses.

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Worldcoin May Have a Biometric Data Black Market Problem

Worldcoin, the digital identity and financial services crypto project that verifies people by scanning their irises, has found itself amid controversy after reports alleging that fraudsters are buying iris scans from the black market to register on the platform.

The project, which is headed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is currently preparing to launch and has been registering users across the world with the help of its physical imaging device called the Orb. The project aims to give everyone on the planet some of its Worldcoin crypto token after registration while their accounts are anonymized.

The lure of free crypto that may be exchanged for real money in the future seems to have been too strong for some people. According to Chinese blockchain-focused outlet Blockbeat, fraudsters have been offering iris scans from Know Your Customer (KYC) merchants in Cambodia for less than $30. Other iris scan may come from African countries such as Kenya.

Blockbeat did not clarify whether the back market iris scans were genuine or whether they were successfully used for registration for Worldcoin.

In response to Gizmodo, Worldcoin said that the platform did not have an issue with iris scans on the black market but it did detect several hundred cases of fraud involving its digital passport World ID, the verification protocol used to determine real identities. The World IDs are being sent to a third-party World app on the black market. The company claims it has taken steps to increase security and create a new recovery process for users’ World ID.

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Consumer Group Warns Smartphone Facial Recognition Apps Are Vulnerable to Spoofing

Smartphone face biometrics from many leading brands are vulnerable to spoof attacks with 2D photographs, according to a new report from UK-based consumer testing and review group Which?, according to Yahoo Finance UK.

The group says the vulnerability is “unacceptable,” and has “worrying implications” for user’s security.

On-device biometrics are used for device unlocking and local authentication, while KYC processes for customer onboarding and strong remote identity verification is typically carried out with server-side biometrics and other signals, with a layer of liveness or presentation attack detection.

The phones tested include Honor, Motorola, Nokia, Oppo, Samsung, Vivo and Xiaomi handsets. Apple’s 3D FaceID biometrics were not fooled by the photos. The devices tested range in price from £89.99 to nearly £1,000 (approximately US$112 to $1,244), but the majority of phones that failed the test are lower-cost or mid-range models.

Out of 48 new smartphone models tested, 60 percent were not vulnerable to spoofing with a photograph.

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Facial Recognition Shows Up in Public Housing, Small Cities

The race to make biometric surveillance commonplace is only getting faster, with systems going up in public housing and municipalities far from city crime.

With the growth comes a mission that residents worldwide have often been told is off the table, that of the all-seeing, always analyzing sentinel that never stops recording what happens in the community.

The issue is again in the news, this time following a lengthy article in The Washington Post reporting on facial recognition systems being used in United States public housing.

Also, Context, a Thomson Reuters Foundation analytical publication, has shown how surveillance vendors are selling smaller cities on big-city facial recognition systems – and how residents are being cajoled into linking their own cameras to police networks.

Post reporters said they found six public housing centers whose boards have purchased surveillance cameras and computer servers. Some of those on the list also use biometric surveillance algorithms.

They were the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing, Omaha Housing, Scott County (Virginia) Redevelopment & Housing, Jefferson County (Ohio) Housing and Grand Rapids (Michigan) Housing agencies.

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First Smart Gun With Fingerprint Unlocking Hits The Market

The first so-called “smart gun” that uses biometrics to unlock for shooting will hit the market at the end of the year.

Biofire Technologies announced this month that it is taking pre-orders for its home defense gun that is intended to prevent unwanted access to children and criminals. This is either a big step forward in gun safety or a gimmick with unreliable technology, depending on who you ask.

Smart guns, otherwise known as personalized handguns, have been in development for many years. The CEO and Founder of Biofire Technologies, Kai Kloepfer, told The Epoch Times in an interview that this is the first “major innovation in how a handgun has been designed or manufactured in 50 years.”

Kloepfer, 26, has been working on designing a smart gun since he was a teenager. “This is a new option for gun owners to give them peace of mind that their children or criminals won’t get their hands on it.”

The Biofire Smart Gun is a handgun that can be stored with fingerprints and 3D facial recognition to unlock it to shoot. The company says unlocking works in the dark. The data is stored in the gun in encrypted form. The gun can have biometrics for up to five total authorized users.

The Biofire gun has integrated infrared sensors in the grip to keep it armed while the user is holding it. As soon as the grip is released, the gun locks. It is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that Biofire says lasts several months with average use and can fire continuously for several hours. The firearm only comes in 9mm caliber, but buyers are given multiple choices for color and style and left- or right-handed

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Colorado school district to introduce biometric scans of kids for free school meal access

The Poudre School District, in Colorado, will be piloting a controversial biometrics program to make the distribution of free lunches more “efficient.”

The pilot program will launch by May 25, 2023 in elementary, middle, and high schools, if it doesn’t go contested.

According to the school district, the biometric scans would take around two seconds. The program will use identiMetrics scanners, which will replace the current system where students have to enter their ID number on a keyboard to access their free school meal.

The fingerprints will be stored locally by the school district.

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Giving up biometrics at US airports soon won’t be optional, transport security chief says

The chief of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) David Pekoske said that the agency is considering biometric technology to reduce traveler processing times and reduce the number of screening officers. He made the comments at the South by Southwest conference, which focused on aviation security.

Pekoske noted that the TSA’s role is maintaining security and the transportation system and staying ahead of threats. For those reasons, it is “critically important that this system has as little friction as it possibly can, while we provide for safety and security.”

The TSA has been relying on biometric technology in the identification verification process. According to the agency, the newest technology it has been using is over 99% effective and does not have problems identifying darker-skinned people like the old technology.

“We’re upgrading our camera systems all the time, upgrading our lighting systems,” Pekoske said. “[We’re] upgrading our algorithms, so that we are using the very most advanced algorithms and technology we possibly can.”

Pekoske said that the agency will ensure it remains transparent with the public about the data that is taken, what it is used for, and for how long it will be stored. For now, he said that travelers can opt out of processes they are not comfortable with.

According to The Dallas Morning News, giving up biometric data for travel will eventually not be optional.

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US Military Group Wants Weaponized Deepfakes, Better Biometric Tools

At least some in the U.S. military have heard enough about deepfakes and they want in.

Investigative-news publisher The Intercept has got hold of a lengthy technology wish list that its editors feel was created by the U.S. Special Operations Command. Two items in the document are biometric in nature.

The command, most often referred to as SOCOM, performs the United States’ most secret and daring military missions. And officers want to add the ability to create and deploy deepfakes against those outside the country.

They also want to better their game when it comes to biometrically identify individuals using, among other techniques, touchless fingerprint capture over long distances and in all environments. Officials also want rapid handheld DNA collection gear. This can be found in the document above under 4.1.2.3 Biometrics.

In all cases, SOCOM wants to cut false positives and the ability to compare scanned biometrics against watch lists on handheld devices or remote databases. Those handhelds will need to perform all common biometric analyses, including DNA comparisons.

But the showstopper is the unit’s deepfake ambitions (at 4.3.1.4. Military Information Support Operations in the document). The leaders of many advanced economies, including various agency heads in the United States, have publicly stated their wariness of deepfakes.

(Three years ago, a NATO panel about deepfakes dismissed concerns about deepfakes. Even last year, there were those telling people not to worry.)

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Face Biometrics Getting Deeper into Policing, Sparking Concerns

Those worried about the use of facial recognition by law enforcement have warned about how the technology could become entrenched in bureaucracies, growing in use and getting harder to question from outside governments.

A trio of recent reports, from Germany, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom seem to bear that out.

In Germany, a civil rights activist, Matthias Monroy, writing in his own blog, says a facial recognition system used to identify unknown people has grown “dramatically” from 2021 to 2022.

The database reportedly belongs to Germany’s federal police. According to Monroy, it was searched about 7,700 in 2022, compared to 6,100 times in 2021.

About 2,800 people were identified using the police’s algorithm last year, compared to 1,300 in 2021.

The advocate says that the Federal Ministry offered the information after being asked by a party in parliament. He also said that, according to the ministry, the same data has not been received from German states.

The images are gathered from CCTV cameras and from phones used by police to record the faces of suspects of crimes. Asylum seekers are in the same database.

Reportedly, the number of facial images in the police database grew by about 1.5 million last year compared to the previous year primarily because only 400,000 images were deleted.

If German police are starting to hold on to photos longer, they might be in good company.

Trade publication ComputerWeekly is reporting that some in the UK feel the government is adopting a biometrics “culture of retention.”

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