Consumer biometrics gain steam from gun safety to digital ID documents

Consumer biometrics still hold strong appeal for investors, as smart gun Biofire demonstrates, and a new patent awarded to Apple hints at a possible future for digital identity authentication with biometrics on smartphones in two of the top news stories of the week. Insider insights from Idex Biometrics and BIO-key also were also among the most widely-read article on Biometric Update.

Top biometrics news of the week

A smart gun that authenticates its rightful user with fingerprint biometrics to unlock and lock is coming to market from Biofire Technologies, after it collected $14 million in series A funding. The redesigned biometric weapon drew support from a prominent tech backer, and the company is now hiring.

Among a raft of new patents granted to Apple by the USPTO is one for authenticating digital identity documents, like the mDLs being loaded onto American’s iPhones. The authentication method described involves a digital representation of the ID, rather than a copy of the physical document, which includes face biometric data for comparison to verify the bearer’s identity.

Switzerland’s new biometric passports are now available, with ID cards scheduled to launch next year. Kyrgyzstan is up to 3 million biometric passports issued, while Norway has eliminated paper consent forms for youths applying for passports or ID cards, and will let teens apply for ID cards by themselves.

Changes across the payments landscape, from decentralized banking and BNPL to digital wallets, present a series of opportunities for biometric authentication, writes Idex Biometrics CCO Catharina Eklof in a Biometric Update guest post. Eklof explores the impact of digital currencies and financial inclusion drives on payments, and how converging trends affect the market for biometric payment cards.

India’s Aadhaar and the rest of the Digital India Stack could provide valuable lessons for nations in sub-Saharan Africa trying to quickly deploy digital public infrastructure and increase financial inclusion, a new report on development policy argues. Experts in the field from India are increasingly engaged with African countries and organizations.

Police from five countries worked with the WEF, a UN body and INTERPOL to build insights from field work into a framework for responsible facial recognition use for law enforcement. Algorithms need to be overseen by humans, and those setting policy and using the technology need to understand it, they say. Being transparent with communities is important, but may not be enough to make real-time facial recognition acceptable.

The NYPD’s transparency around facial recognition and other surveillance technologies is insufficient, according to an assessment from the state’s Inspector General. The oversight rules changes with 2020’s POST Act, but the force is not being as specific or forthcoming as the IG would like, leading to 15 recommendations to improve its required Impact and Use Policies.

PimEyes says it is working with authorities in the U.S., UK and at least two EU countries to combat human trafficking and other ills with its facial recognition web searching capability. The inability of EU regulators to enforce penalties on Clearview AI continues to irk some on the continent, however. Into this unsettled regulatory environment, a new competitor has been launched in Poland, called Public Mirror.

Freevolt has formed a partnership to deliver biometric cards for access control to pharmaceuticals enterprises in Europe to reduce how long employees spend logging into systems. Toppan also announced a new smart cards partnership with a Japanese ICT institute to develop post-quantum cryptography for the form factor. A pilot focussed on providing digital medical records which are accessed with face biometrics.

Customer identity and access management is very different from its better-known cousin IAM, in its focus on convenience and its impact on revenue, BIO-key International VP Product Kimberly Biddings argues in another guest post. Centralized biometrics enable authentication from anywhere, and can help deliver customized online services to customers anywhere.

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Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometric cards  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  facial recognition  |  identity management  |  research and development  |  week in review