Tag: biometrics

European Union to Fingerprint All Travelers, Including Americans Beginning in 2025

Beginning in 2025, travelers entering the European Union, including those from visa-exempt countries such as the United States will be fingerprinted and have a facial recognition image taken under the incoming European Travel Information and Authorisation System’s (ETIAS) Entry/Exit System (EES).

Previously, Americans only needed a passport to visit E.U. countries.

“ETIAS travel authorization is an entry requirement for visa-exempt nationals traveling to any of these 30 European countries. It is linked to a traveller’s passport. It is valid for up to three years or until the passport expires, whichever comes first. If you get a new passport, you need to get a new ETIAS travel authorization,” the EU said on November 11. “With a valid ETIAS travel authorization, you can enter the territory of these European countries as often as you want for short-term stays – normally for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. However, it does not guarantee entry. When you arrive, a border guard will ask to see your passport and other documents and verify that you meet the entry conditions.”

Part of the ETIAS documentation process includes facial recognition imaging and fingerprint scanning into the EES.

“The Entry/Exit System (EES) will be an automated IT system for registering travellers from third-countries, both short-stay visa holders and visa exempt travellers, each time they cross an EU external border. The system will register the person’s name, type of the travel document, biometric data (fingerprints and captured facial images) and the date and place of entry and exit,” the E.U. said on October 9.

The E.U. specified what biometrics will be recorded for visa-exempt travelers, such as those carrying a U.S. passport.

“…the system will store 4 of your fingerprints and your facial image. Currently, the fingerprints of children below 12 years old are not scanned, even if they are subject to the EES,” the E.U. said November 11.

Many travelers will even have to pay to undergo the new process.

“Once the program starts, some 1.4 billion people from the U.S. and dozens of other countries will need ETIAS to enter 30 European countries. The document will cost €7, or about $7.50; however, travelers under 18 years old or over 70 will not have to pay a fee. The ETIAS travel pass will be valid for three consecutive years,” Forbes said in April.

The system will be phased in over six-months beginning in 2025, initially it was planned to go into effect at the same time in all countries. The system was announced in a press release in 2017.

“On Wednesday, the European Commission outlined the phased approach for the digital border scheme and submitted it to the European Parliament and the Council for adoption. Once approved, E.U. member states and the E.U.’s main IT agency EU-LISA will have six months to deploy the EES,” Biometric Update said Friday. “The new announcement signals a change in the E.U.’s plans which originally envisioned deploying the system simultaneously in every country. To allow for a progressive introduction of the border system, the E.U. will have to change the EES Regulation which requires all E.U. member states to start using it simultaneously and for all travelers. The new, adjusted regulation will allow countries to implement the EES gradually.”

The biometric scans will replace passport stamps, similar to concert tickets being replaced by smartphone QR codes.

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Apple patent uses FRT with ‘body data’ so cameras can ID people without seeing faces

Apple has been granted a patent for “identity recognition utilizing face-associated body characteristics.” The face recognition technology is anticipated to appear in a forthcoming smart security product from the tech giant.

Patent No. 12154386 2B, filed in May 2022 and granted on November 26, 2024, describes a system that associates facial recognition with other body characteristics, which might include things like clothing, gait, or gesture, to recognize certain people even if their faces are not visible to the camera.

The patent outlines the problem it intends to solve in clear terms: “sometimes a video camera may not be able to perform facial recognition of a person, given a particular video feed.”

It then describes the capability to monitor a video feed and determine, based on the analysis of video frames and previously stored face and body biometrics, whether an identification can be made with a primary body characteristic (face) or requires a secondary characteristic.

The system might work by linking a gallery of “body croppings” such as torso, arms or legs with their face biometrics, then comparing the data with a live video feed. It proceeds in a stepped approach, identifying face, then body parts, then, if needed, “physical characteristics” that could include body shape, skin color, or the texture or color of clothing. The order of operations is adaptable to the scenario.

The resulting data constitutes a cluster of “bodyprints” which can be assigned a confidence score against a person’s faceprint and other characteristics. Since there is a limited time in which certain identifiers are useful (clothing, for instance), the technology can utilize storage periods as brief as 24 hours.

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Kuwait Warns Foreign Residents of Upcoming Deadline for Compulsory Biometric Registration

Kuwaiti authorities have called on foreign residents in the country to ensure that they complete an ongoing compulsory biometric registration exercise before the government-prescribed deadline at the end of this year.

The deadline for Kuwaiti citizens to comply with the requirement elapsed in September, but aliens have until December 31 to do so.

Col. Thamer Dakhin Al-Mutairi, an official from the Personnel Identification Department, is referenced by Arab Times as saying that all those who do not meet the December deadline will have their transactions disrupted.

Already, the government says citizens who failed to meet the September deadline have a block on some of their transactions such as banking services, although they still have a chance to catch up.

The government indicates that so far, slightly over three million people are already done with the process, while over 754,000 others are yet to do so.

Al-Mutairi has also reminded residents of the points where registration takes place. He says it is safer to book appointments because all those who show up without an appointment may not be attended to by identification personnel.

Kuwait mandated a compulsory collection of fingerprint biometrics from citizens and residents in May last year, saying it is part of efforts to bolster the country’s national security architecture.

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US authorizes CIA mercenaries to run biometric concentration camps in Gaza Strip

The Biden administration has approved the deployment of 1,000 CIA-trained private mercenaries as part of a joint U.S.-Israeli plan to turn Gaza’s apocalyptic rubblescape into a high-tech dystopia.

Starting with Al-Atatra, a village in the northwestern Gaza Strip, the plan calls to build what the Israeli daily Ynet calls “humanitarian bubbles” – turning the remains of villages and neighborhoods into tiny concentration camps cut off from their environs and surrounded and controlled by mercenaries.

This comes as Israel carries out daily massacres and ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, enacting the proposal known as The Generals’ Plan, originally crafted by former national security chief Giora Eiland to turn Gaza into “a place where no human being can exist.”

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Logging Into a Brave New World: How Facial Recognition Just Got Personal

Surprising exactly no one paying attention to the slow erosion of privacy, the US General Services Administration (GSA) has rolled out its shiny new toy: facial recognition technology for accessing login.gov. Yes, that beloved single sign-in service, connecting Americans to federal and state agencies, now wants your face—literally. This gateway, clicked into over 300 million times a year by citizens has decided the most efficient way to keep us all “safe” is by scanning our mugs. How very 2024.

But of course, this little “upgrade” didn’t just appear overnight. Oh no, it dragged itself through bureaucratic purgatory, complete with false starts, delays, and some spicy critique from the Inspector General. Apparently, login.gov had been fibbing about its compliance with Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2)—a fancy label for a government-mandated security standard that requires real-deal verification of who you are. Up until now, that “verification” meant having someone eyeball your ID card photo and say, “Yep, that looks about right,” rather than dipping into the biometric surveillance toolkit.

Facial recognition was supposed to make its grand debut last year, but things got complicated when it turned out login.gov wasn’t actually playing by the rules it claimed to follow. The Inspector General, ever the fun police, caught them misrepresenting their tech’s adherence to the IAL2 standard, causing the rollout to stall while everyone scrambled to figure out if they could get away with this. Now, after enough piloting to give a nervous airline passenger a heart attack, login.gov has finally reached compliance, but not without leaving a greasy trail of unanswered questions in its wake.

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The U.S. Government Is Dramatically Expanding The Use Of Facial Recognition Technology

Do you want to live in a society where you are required to have your face scanned wherever you go?  If not, you may want to speak up now while you still can.  As you will see below, the U.S. government is aggressively expanding the use of facial recognition technology for identification verification purposes.  For now, the use of facial recognition technology will be optional.  But as we have seen before, once a voluntary option is adopted by enough people our leaders have a way of making it mandatory.  Of course it isn’t just our government that is pushing facial recognition technology.  It is popping up throughout our society, and given enough time it would literally be everywhere.

Login.gov is billed as “a single sign-on solution for US government websites”, and now users of Login.gov will be given the option to use facial recognition technology to verify their identities…

An online hub for Americans to access benefits and services across the federal government is giving its users a new option to sign on.

The General Services Administration will begin offering facial recognition technology as an option for users of Login.gov, a one-stop for government-provided public services, to verify their identities.

GSA’s Technology Transformation Services announced Wednesday it will allow Login.gov users to verify their identity online through facial technology that meets standards set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s 800-63-3 Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2) guidelines.

We are being told that this will help reduce identity theft and fraud, and I don’t know anyone that likes identity theft and fraud.

But do we really want to live in a dystopian world where our faces are constantly being scanned all the time?

I certainly don’t.

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Parsons Gets $1.9M US Army Technical Direction Letter for Next-Gen Biometrics + More

The U.S. Army granted a technical direction letter worth $1.9 million to Centreville, Virginia-based Parsons Corporation for the acquisition of biometric mobile and static collection devices, including software, in support of the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Biometrics Collection Capability (NXGBCC).

Expected to be fielded in 2025, NXGBCC will replace the Army’s Biometrics Automated Toolset-Army, which the Army says, “is old and obsolete.”

NXGBCC will gather, analyze, and share fingerprints, facial, iris and voice biometrics, and is the first time Army personnel will use a capability that is software-based rather than tied to unique hardware that must be maintained, according to the Army.

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Germany Rushes to Expand Biometric Surveillance

Germany is a leader in privacy and data protection, with many Germans being particularly sensitive to the processing of their personal data – owing to the country’s totalitarian history and the role of surveillance in both Nazi Germany and East Germany.

So, it is disappointing that the German government is trying to push through Parliament, at record speed, a “security package” that would increase biometric surveillance at an unprecedented scale. The proposed measures contravene the government’s own coalition agreement, and undermine European law and the German constitution.

In response to a knife-stabbing in the West-German town of Solingen in late-August, the government has introduced a so-called “security package” consisting of a bouquet of measures to tighten asylum rules and introduce new powers for law enforcement authorities.

Among them, three stand out due to their possibly disastrous effect on fundamental rights online. 

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The Dangers of Biometrics: Beyond Fingerprints and Facial Recognition

Biometrics, the science of identifying individuals based on their unique physical and behavioral characteristics, has a rich history. However, it wasn’t until the late 19th century that Sir Francis Galton established the scientific basis for fingerprint identification.

Over the years, biometrics has evolved from manual methods to sophisticated electronic systems. In the 1960s, the FBI began using computers to store and match fingerprints. The 1970s saw the development of voice recognition systems, and the 1980s brought iris recognition technology. The advent of digital cameras in the 1990s paved the way for facial recognition systems.

Biometrics has become integral to various applications, from securing smartphones to controlling access to high-security facilities. Fingerprint scanners, for instance, are now standard on most smartphones, allowing users to unlock their devices with just a touch. Airports and border control increasingly adopt facial recognition technology to verify travelers’ identities. In other areas, such as India’s Aadhaar program, iris scanners are used for national identification. Meanwhile, wearables and smart home devices continuously collect data from their users’ daily activities. In some cases, individuals willingly hand over their sensitive data, as seen with 23&Me, a company facing financial difficulties and considering selling the DNA data of its 15 million users.

However, the widespread use of biometrics also raises significant privacy concerns. Unlike passwords or other credentials, biometric data such as DNA is immutable—you can’t change it once it’s compromised. This permanence fuels fears about the security of biometric databases. It is a growing concern, as they present attractive targets for threat actors seeking to gain access to sensitive personal data.

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Illinois changes biometric privacy law to help corporations avoid big payouts

Illinois has changed its Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) to dramatically limit the financial penalties faced by companies that illegally obtain or sell biometric identifiers such as eye scans, face scans, fingerprints, and voiceprints.

The 2008 law required companies to obtain written consent for the collection or use of biometric data and allowed victims to sue for damages of $1,000 for each negligent violation and $5,000 for each intentional or reckless violation. But an amendment enacted on Friday states that multiple violations related to a single person’s biometric data will be counted as only one violation.

The amendment, approved by the Illinois Legislature in May and signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on August 2, provides “that a private entity that more than once collects or discloses a person’s biometric identifier or biometric information from the same person in violation of the Act has committed a single violation for which the aggrieved person is entitled to, at most, one recovery.”

As Reuters reports, the “changes to the law effectively overturn a 2023 Illinois Supreme Court ruling that said companies could be held liable for each time they misused a person’s private information and not only the first time.” That ruling came in a proposed class action brought against the White Castle restaurant chain by an employee.

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