...iris system needs refining
Unfortunately for Senex, while its technologylooks extremely sleek, it did not perform well at the UK show. It proved extremely difficultto enrol into the system, let alone be identified.This is in stark contrast to new products beingreleased by Iridian partners, such as Panasonic’sBM-ET500 Series access control system, whichhave made iris capture extremely hassle-free. In itsdefence, Senex said that the camera it is currentlyusing will be replaced in the final product, and thatit had experienced unusual problems at the show.
Senex is certainly not short on the manpowerneeded to improve the performance of itsproduct. Of the 100 staff at Senex Technologies,approximately 20 are working in its biometricdivision. The supplier is also working with the second biggest university in Korea, the Yonsei University, where algorithm research is being performed by Dr. Lee Yilbyung. Thesupplier is also co-operating with ETRI, agovernment research organisation. The comp-any’s product is now undergoing tests at theKorean Fishery Corporation, securing access toseveral restricted areas and a vault at the bank.
A main difference between Iridian’s technologyand that of Senex is that the TrueEYE systemextracts 128 bytes of information (half theamount required by the Iridian system). Inparticular the technology is being aimed at user verification in applications, such as ATMmachines, on-line user identification for internettransactions and access control. At the IFSECshow in Birmingham, the supplier introduced itsiris-based credit card verification concept.
Contact: James Jeon at Senex Technologies,Tel: +82 2 2056 4341, email:[email protected]
Lina Page at Iridian Technologies,Tel: +1 856 222 3102, email: [email protected]
Privacy group slurs use offacial recognition at airportThe use of facial recognition in airport sur-veillance applications has been fiercely debatedover the last month, with claims and counterclaims between privacy advocates and manufac-turers surrounding the technology’s effectiveness.
Individual manufacturers of facial recognitionsystems have also being vying for supremacy in thisparticular market, making for a hotbed of activity.
Numerous airports have implemented thetechnology including: Palm Beach Inter-national; Boston Logan; Dallas Fort WorthInternational; St. Petersburg-Clearwater In-ternational Airport; and Fresno International.The first eruption came when the AmericanCivil Liberties Union (ACLU) claimed that theuse of Visionics’ facial recognition system atPalm Beach International Airport (PBIA) had“failed” as less than 50% of volunteers on thewatch list were picked up, and because therewould be more than 50 false positives daily.“We hardly need elaborate on the mayhemwhich would result from a gizmo that finds aterrorist every 20 minutes,” the ACLU said.
This claim was quickly countered byVisionics. “Recently, special interest groups havemade statements in the media about facialsurveillance that are both misleading and in-correct,” a company statement said. “At PBIA,the intention was to virtually eliminate the false alarm rate. Hence, the sensitivity level wasset low. With a close to zero false alarm rate the system performed at 55% correct alarm rate. This means that without any manualintervention or false alarms the system was ableto intercept more than half of the subjects onPBIA’s watch list.”
Visionics also countered by saying that falsealarms can easily be cleared using visualinspection – much the same as airport securitydeals with metal detectors that sound theiralarms.
The supplier told Btt that the PBIA trial wasinstalled by one of its partners and that at a55% correct alarm rate, there was a false alarmrate of 0.3%. The intention at PBIA was to setthe lowest false alarm rate possible. In anenvironment where a high capture rate wasneeded, the success went up to over 90%, albeitwith a rise in false alarm rate. For example,during tests at Dallas Fort-Worth InternationalAirport (DFW), the sensitivity level was set onmedium and at the conclusion of the test the system had been operating at a correctalarm rate of 94%, with a false alarm rate ofabout 1.5%.
A further claim by the ACLU was that thepoor performance of the technology had led toan airport decision not to purchase thetechnology. Not so, countered Visionics, whichclaimed the decision on whether airports shouldimplement facial recognition technology is no longer the responsibility of individualairports.
A spokesperson at Visionics told Btt thathalfway through the recent trials theTransportation Security Administration (TSA)took over responsibility for airport security. Sonow, airports such as Palm Beach, are taking a‘wait and see attitude’, rather than going it
NEWS
2Biometric Technology Today • June 2002
Surveillance/Facial recognition
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alone and buying potentially expensive facialrecognition systems.
At the other airports, recent events have beenalmost as intriguing. In the Boston Logan trial,for example, Visionics in conjunction withRaytheon went head to head with its maincompetitor Viisage Technology. Both claimedcorrect alarm rates at over 90%, althoughViisage’s system required people to stop andlook at the camera.
Fresno Airport has also been at the centre of controversy as the integrator of the facialrecognition system, Pelco, ended its relationshipwith Viisage, switching over to Visionics’technology.
Contact: Frances Zelazny at Visionics Corporation,Tel: +1 201 332 9213,email: [email protected]
Tom Colatosti at Viisage,Tel: +1 978 952 2211, email: [email protected]
Australia looks at facialbiometrics for passportsBiometric facial identifiers could beintroduced into the Australian passport ifnewly-funded research into the technologyproves successful. The introduction of facialrecognition technology is designed to cutdown on passport fraud and help reduce therisk of potential terrorist attacks.
Australian Treasurer Peter Costello hasearmarked approximately A$3.0 million in2002-2003 for research and development by theDepartment of Foreign Affairs and Trade(DFAT) into the potential use of a facialbiometric identifier for the new Australianpassport.
According to Costello: “Introduction ofbiometric identifier would strengthen currentidentity verification processes and significantlyimprove the detection of fraudulent passportapplications.”
The development of a biometric identifierwould be in line with action taken by othercountries. For example, the UK and theNetherlands are known to be actively looking atthe different options for integrating biometricswith their passports, and new legislationannounced by the USA last month outlined itsintention to put biometric identifiers intopassports by October 2004.
Funding for the Australian research will come through a A$5 increase in the price ofobtaining a passport. Depending on the results
of the research, a decision on the introductionof a biometric identifier could be made nextyear.
Meanwhile, Sydney Airport is currentlytrialing two biometric applications – a one-to-one check of passports against faces and a one-to-many pilot that uses surveillance cameras toidentify wanted faces within the airportenvironment. At a recent biometric conferencein Sydney, Fiona Fraser, director, travellerstrategies, Australian Customs Service, wasreported telling delegates: “Prior to September11th our interest was solely one-to-oneapplications. One-to-many verification was notan option we considered at all really.”
The Australian Customs Service said that the ability for biometric systems to smoothpassenger processing was becoming moreattractive, because of the anticipated doublingin passenger numbers in Australia over the next10 years. To cope with this load using currentprocedures, airport capacity would have toquadruple within 10 years.
Hospital has embracedfingerprint technologyUp to 4,500 employees at the Scott & White Memorial hospital in the USA arecurrently using fingerprint recognitiontechnology to access network applications,and soon the use of the technology will beextended to cover the hospital’s mobileworkforce.
Working with a healthcare systems integrator,Scott & White developed a specialised bio-metrically-enabled single sign-on applicationusing proprietary algorithms and BioEngineSoftware Developer Kit from US-based supplierIdentix.
Over the past 18 months, Scott & White has put biometric hardware and software into3,300 desktops, allowing employees to accessmore than 70 network applications with thetouch of a finger. Now, Scott & White has placed an order for 100 Identix BioTouch PC Fingerprint Cards with BioLogon authenti-cation software to extend the use of biometricauthentication to its mobile healthcare pro-vider work force. Scott & White anticipatesdeployments to 900 additional mobile health-care providers and to another 700 desktops overthe next year.
The hospital believes the implementation isthe largest biometrically-enabled single sign-onhealthcare network in the USA. The hospital
NEWS
Biometric Technology Today • June 2002
P r o d u c tn e w s
• Motorola has introducedthe CivilScan Station 1000, adesktop fingerprinter designedto enhance airport securitytechnology. The self-containedunit is easily transported, uses FBI-certified optics, andis fully compliant with IAFISand ANSI/ NIST image stan-dards, the supplier claims.Users in the USA are able tocapture and submit finger-prints to the FBI through theOffice of Personnel Manage-ment. Future product distri-bution plans for the CivilScanStation 1000 include expan-sion from North America tothe worldwide civil identifi-cation market.
• Kronos, a provider offrontline labour managementsolutions, has launched theKronos Touch ID system, afingerprint option for itsKronos 4500 badge terminal.The system uses MV1200technology from Bioscrypt,which is designed for OEMsand embedded systems dev-elopers and is about the size ofa business card.
• Security technology com-pany ImageWare Systems haspartnered with Cross MatchTechnologies to produce bio-metric-based ID badges. Underthe terms of the agreement,Cross Match will use Image-Ware’s Epibuilder software todesign, configure and print IDbadges that capture real-timeforensic quality fingerprintsand demographic information.
• Viisage Technology haslaunched a self-contained dig-ital camera embedded with its facial recognition soft-ware. The BiometriCam is acompact, stand-alone devicethat plugs directly into astandard network connection.Operating in real-time, thecamera constantly scans facialimages, checking them againsta database for identificationpurposes.
3
Healthcare/Fingerprint
Immigration/Face recognition
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