Major Biometrics Deal in Public Sector Dominates News Headlines Biometric update This week, governments around the world are automating processes and moving services online. Sri Lanka is seeking to bid for a contract with an Indian company for a national digital ID, and Jamaica is seeking bids for a biometric enrollment device. In the US, Socure executives have voiced the disappointment of many at the lack of action, and on the other side of the globe, the state’s digital ID system in Australia is using FaceTec’s facial recognition algorithms. In the private sector, the iProov facial recognition system to speed up international rail travel is officially in place, and startup Bureau has raised his $16 million.
Biometric Top Stories of the Week
ETIAS has issued a memo clarifying that applications for European travel authorization from visa waiver countries do not include the submission of biometrics. However, the biometric passport number is part of the application and the technical specifications of the ETIAS watchlist are not published. Some observers fear that the disruption will hurt tourism.
SmartCheck biometric gates using iProov technology have been put into production by Eurostar at London’s rail hub. The system, which counts Entrust and apparently Inverid as partners, is expected to save both time and space after being successfully tested to ease congestion associated with post-Brexit passport checks.
Sri Lanka is preparing to evaluate proposals to provide and build a national digital identity system. Bids from Indian bidders only, but with PWC as a consultant. The Government of India has a supervisory role in this project utilizing the MOSIP platform.
Jamaica has issued an RFP to set up 10 biometric registration centers in the country’s post offices, with more planned in the future. These centers are used for enrollment in the National Digital ID NIDS, which includes fingerprints and facial images. The first registration center is already up and running.
America’s federal cybersecurity plan has disappointed many observers, such as Socur’s Jordan Barris, with its lack of consideration for digital identity. At the same time, the Labor Department is allocating grants to improve identity verification capabilities in states and partnering with the Postal Service and GSA on in-person ID verification.
Meanwhile, European cybersecurity agencies have released a report specifically on digital identity standards, which includes an analysis and recommendations for policymakers on EU digital identity wallets. Adoption of multiple ISO/IEC standards is recommended. A special group should be convened to investigate the vulnerability of the EUDI wallet, ENISA said.
The New South Wales government has worked with Mattr to build verifiable credentials into digital wallets, and with BRYKGroup to use FaceTec biometrics and liveness detection as part of their digital identity system. But the federal government, in the latest step in an eight-year saga, will move responsibility for digital identity policy away from the Digital Transformation Agency and into the Treasury Department.
California-based start-up Bureau has raised a staggering $16 million in Series A funding to fund its growing share of the identity verification and risk prevention orchestration market. The company’s platform uses phone numbers to tokenize identities authenticated by selfie biometrics.
OpenAI avoids rolling out features of its ChatGPT large-scale language model that can be used for face recognition and face analysis, given potential legal issues and uncertainty about what comments to make. This AI is already used that way for celebrities, such as celebrities with Wikipedia pages, but similar capabilities have great potential for a variety of uses.
Worldcoin has issued over 2 million digital IDs and accelerated World ID registrations to over 40,000 every week in June. The latest in regular announcements from the company credits his Orb journey to collect iris biometrics in Barcelona, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and New York.
A bill introduced in the Massachusetts legislature could find a compromise between those who insist police use powerful tools and some of the toughest local government bans in the U.S. MIT Technology Review claim. The article summarizes two aspects of the debate in Massachusetts, noting that the debate is taking place within a broader national consideration of police use of facial recognition.
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Article topics
Biometrics | Digital Identity | Weekly Review
