Tag Archives: facial recognition

Clean Fast Contactless Biometrics

(Image from DW)

The COVID-19 pandemic may be a fading memory, but contactless biometrics remains popular.

Back in the 1980s, you had to touch something to get the then-new “livescan” machines to capture your fingerprints. While you no longer had messy ink-stained fingers, you still had to put your fingers on a surface that a bunch of other people had touched. What if they had the flu? Or AIDS (the health scare of that decade)?

As we began to see facial recognition in the 1990s and early 2000s, one advantage of that biometric modality was that it was CONTACTLESS. Unlike fingerprints, you didn’t have to press your face against a surface.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XhWFHKWCSE.

But then fingerprints also became contactless after someone asked an unusual question in 2004.

“Actually this effort launched before that, as there were efforts in 2004 and following years to capture a complete set of fingerprints within 15 seconds…”

This WAS an unusual question, considering that it took a minute or more to capture inked prints or livescan prints. And the government expected this to happen in 15 seconds?

A decade later several companies were pursuing this in conjunction with NIST. There were two solutions: dedicated kiosks such as MorphoWave from my then-employer MorphoTrak, and solutions that used a standard smartphone camera such as SlapShot from Sciometrics and Integrated Biometrics.

Slide 10 from the NIST presentation posted at https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2016/12/14/iai_2016-nist_contactless_fingerprints-distro-20160811.pdf.

The, um, upshot is that now contactless fingerprint and face capture are both a thing. Contactless capture provides speed, and even the impossible 15 second capture target was blown away. 

Fingers and faces can be captured “on the move” in airports, border crossings, stadiums, and university lunchrooms and other educational facilities.

Perhaps Iris and voice can be considered contactless and fast. 

But even “rapid” DNA isn’t that rapid.

Hospital Patient Facial Recognition

(Hospitalized wildebeest facial recognition image from Google Gemini)

It’s no secret that I detest the practice of identifying a patient by their name and birthdate. A fraudster can easily acquire this knowledge and impersonate a patient.

The people that I hang around with promote biometrics as a better solution to authentication of a hospital patient whose identity was previously verified. Of course, this crowd promotes biometrics as the solution to EVERYTHING. My former Motorola coworker Edward Chen has established a company called Biometrics4ALL.

But the need to identify patients is real. Are you about to remove Jane’s appendix? You’d better make sure that’s Jane on the operating table. And yes, that mistake has happened. (The hospital was very sorry.)

Of the various biometric modalities, face seems the most promising for the health use case, particularly for hospital patients.

  • Fingerprints require you or a medical professional to move your finger(s) to a contact or contactless reader. 
  • Hand geometry is even more difficult.
  • For iris or retinal scans, your eyes have to be open.
  • For voice, you have to be awake. And coherent—I’m not sure if a person can be identified by a moan of pain.
  • DNA takes at least 90 minutes.
  • Gait? Um…no.

Unlike the other modalities, the patient doesn’t have to do anything for facial recognition. Even if asleep or sedated, a medical professional can capture an image of a patient’s face. There are some accuracy considerations; I don’t know how well the algorithms work with closed eyes or a wide open mouth. But it looks promising.

Imprivata agrees that facial recognition is a valuable patient identification method.

“By capturing and analyzing unique facial characteristics such as the distance between the eyes and the shape of the nose, this technology can generate a unique identifier for each patient. This identifier is then linked to the patient’s electronic health record (EHR), ensuring that medical staff access the correct records. This method significantly reduces the risk of misidentification and the occurrence of duplicate records, thereby enhancing patient safety.”

However, I can think of one instance in which patient facial recognition would be challenging.

Burn victims.

If the patient were enrolled before the injury, the combination of disfigurement and bandaging would limit the ability to compare the current face to the previously enrolled one.

But this can be overcome. After all, we figured out how to recognize the faces of people wearing masks.

Don’t Miss the Boat

Bredemarket helps identity/biometric firms.

  • Finger, face, iris, voice, DNA, ID documents, geolocation, and even knowledge.
  • Content-Proposal-Analysis. (Bredemarket’s “CPA.”)

Don’t miss the boat.

Augment your team with Bredemarket.

Find out more.

Don’t miss the boat.

In Case You Missed My Incessant “Biometric Product Marketing Expert” Promotion

Biometric product marketing expert.

Modalities: Finger, face, iris, voice, DNA.

Plus other factors: IDs, data.

John E. Bredehoft has worked for Incode, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, Motorola, Printrak, and a host of Bredemarket clients.

(Some images AI-generated by Google Gemini.)

Biometric product marketing expert.

Well, the Writer Was 60% Correct (Face-Iris Pixels Per Inch)

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

I recently read a web page (I won’t name the site) that included the following text:

…fingerprints, palm prints, latents, faces, and irises at 500 or 1000 ppi.

Which is partially correct.

Yes, fingerprints, palm prints, and latent prints are measured in pixels per inch (ppi), with older systems capturing 500 ppi images, some newer images capturing 1,000 ppi images, and other systems capturing 2,000 ppi or larger images. 2,000 ppi resolution is used in some images in NIST Special Database 300 because why not?

From https://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/image-group/nist-special-database-300.

I don’t know of any latent fingerprint examiner who is capturing 4,000 ppi friction ridge prints, but I bet that someone out there is doing it.

But faces and irises are not measured in pixels per inch.

Why not?

Because, at least until recently, friction ridge impressions were captured differently than faces and irises.

  • Since the 19th century, we’ve naturally assumed that friction ridges are captured via a contact method, whether by inking the fingers and palms and pressing against a paper card, pressing the fingers and palms against a livescan platen, or pressing a finger on a designated spot on a smartphone.
  • You don’t press your face or iris against a camera. Yes, you often have to place your iris very close to a camera, but it’s still a contactless method.
This is not a recommended method of facial image acquisition. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XhWFHKWCSE.

Obviously things have changed in the friction ridge world over the last decade, as more companies support contactless methods of fingerprint capture, either through dedicated devices or standard smartphone cameras.

And that has caused issues for organizations such as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, who have very deep concerns about how contactless fingerprints will function in their current contact-based systems.

From https://fbibiospecs.fbi.gov/file-repository/ebts-v11-2_final.pdf/view.

For example, how will Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification Appendix F (version 11.2 here) compliance work in the world where the friction ridges are NOT pressed against a surface?

Digital Identity and Public Benefits

From https://www.digitalbenefitshub.org/.

Both the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Digital Benefits Hub made important announcements this morning. I will quote portions of the latter announcement.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Digital Benefits Network (DBN) at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University, and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) are collaborating on a two-year-long collaborative research and development project to adapt NIST’s digital identity guidelines to better support the implementation of public benefits policy and delivery while balancing security, privacy, equity, and usability….

In response to heightened fraud and related cybersecurity threats during the COVID-19 pandemic, some benefits-administering agencies began to integrate new safeguards such as individual digital accounts and identity verification, also known as identity proofing, into online applications. However, the use of certain approaches, like those reliant upon facial recognition or data brokers, has raised questions about privacy and data security, due process issues, and potential biases in systems that disproportionately impact communities of color and marginalized groups. Simultaneously, adoption of more effective, evidence-based methods of identity verification has lagged, despite recommendations from NIST (Question A4) and the Government Accountability Office. 

There’s a ton to digest here. This impacts a number of issues that I and others have been discussing for years.

NIST’s own press release, by the way, can be found here.

Investigative Lead, Again

Image from the mid-2010s. “John, how do you use the CrowdCompass app for this Users Conference?” Well, let me tell you…

Because of my former involvement with the biometric user conference managed by IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, Sagem Morpho, Motorola, and older entities, I always like to peek and see what they’re doing these days. And it looks like they’re still prioritizing the educational element of the conference.

Although the 2024 Justice and Public Safety Conference won’t take place until September, the agenda is already online.

Subject to change, presumably.

This Joseph Courtesis session, scheduled for the afternoon of Thursday, September 12 caught my eye. It’s entitled “Ethical Use of Facial Recognition in Law Enforcement: Policy Before Technology.” Here’s an excerpt from the abstract:

This session will focus on post investigative image identification with the assistance of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). It’s important to point out that FRT, by itself, does not produce Probable Cause to arrest.

Re-read that last sentence, then re-read it one more time. 100% of the wrongful arrest cases would be eliminated if everyone adopted this one practice. FRT is ONLY an investigative lead.

And Courtesis makes one related point:

Any image identification process that includes FRT should put policy before the technology.

Any technology that could deprive a person of their liberty needs a clear policy on its proper use.

September conference attendees will definitely receive a comprehensive education from an authority on the topic.

But now I’m having flashbacks, and visions of Excel session planning workbooks are dancing in my head. Maybe they plan with Asana today.

The Really Big Bunch and Facial Recognition in 2024

CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AAAMM_Big_Tech.svg

Are the Big 3 ID facing a threat from a member of the Really Big Bunch (a/k/a FAANG)? Maybe…maybe not.

Amazon Rekognition and HID Global

According to Biometric Update:

HID Global has teamed up with Amazon Web Services to enhance biometric face imaging capabilities by utilizing the Amazon Rekognition computer vision cloud service on its U.ARE.U camera system.

HID Global has previously used Paravision technology for this device. I don’t know how the Amazon agreement affects this.

And I also don’t know whether HID Global will be prevented from providing the U.ARE.U face product to law enforcement, given Amazon’s 2020-2021 ban on law enforcement use of Amazon Rekognition’s face capabilities.

Amazon Rekognition and the FBI

Especially since Fedscoop revealed in January that the FBI was in the “initiation” phase of using Amazon Rekognition. Neither Amazon nor the FBI would say whether facial recognition was part of the deal.

Why is this significant? Because, as I said before:

If Alphabet or Amazon reverse their current reluctance to market their biometric offerings to governments, the entire landscape could change again.

If they wished, Alphabet, Amazon, and the other tech powers could shut IDEMIA, NEC, and Thales completely out of the biometric business with a minimal (to them) investment. If you’re familiar with SWOT analyses, this definitely falls into the “threat” category.

But the Really Big Bunch still fear public reaction to any so-called “police state” involvement.

Don’t Misuse Facial Recognition Technology

From https://www.biometricupdate.com/202405/facewatch-met-police-face-lawsuits-after-facial-recognition-misidentification.

From Biometric Update:

Biometric security company Facewatch…is facing a lawsuit after its system wrongly flagged a 19-year-old girl as a shoplifter….(The girl) was shopping at Home Bargains in Manchester in February when staff confronted her and threw her out of the store…..’I have never stolen in my life and so I was confused, upset and humiliated to be labeled as a criminal in front of a whole shop of people,’ she said in a statement.

While Big Brother Watch and others are using this story to conclude that facial recognition is evil and no one should ever use it, the problem isn’t the technology. The problem is when the technology is misused.

  • Were the Home Bargains staff trained in forensic face examination, so that they could confirm that the customer was the shoplifter? I doubt it.
  • Even if they were forensically trained, did the Home Bargains staff follow accepted practices and use the face recognition results ONLY as an investigative lead, and seek other corroborating evidence to identify the girl as a shoplifter? I doubt it.

Again, the problem is NOT the technology. The problem is MISUSE of the technology—by this English store, by a certain chain of U.S. stores, and even by U.S. police agencies who fail to use facial recognition results solely as an investigative lead.

A prospect approached me some time ago to have Bredemarket help tell this story. However, the prospect has delayed moving forward with the project, and so their story has not yet been told.

Does YOUR firm have a story that you have failed to tell?

Positioning, Messaging, and Your Facial Recognition Product Marketing

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

By Original: Jack Ver at Dutch Wikipedia Vector: Ponor – Own work based on: Plaatsvector.png by Jack Ver at Dutch Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=95477901.

When marketing your facial recognition product (or any product), you need to pay attention to your positioning and messaging. This includes developing the answers to why, how, and what questions. But your positioning and your resulting messaging are deeply influenced by the characteristics of your product.

If facial recognition is your only modality

There are hundreds of facial recognition products on the market that are used for identity verification, authentication, crime solving (but ONLY as an investigative lead), and other purposes.

Some of these solutions ONLY use face as a biometric modality. Others use additional biometric modalities.

From Sandeep Kumar, A. Sony, Rahul Hooda, Yashpal Singh, in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education | Multidisciplinary Academic Research, “Multimodal Biometric Authentication System for Automatic Certificate Generation.”

Your positioning depends upon whether your solution only uses face, or uses other factors such as voice.

Of course, if you initially only offer a face solution and then offer a second biometric, you’ll have to rewrite all your material. “You know how we said that face is great? Well, face and gait are even greater!”

If biometrics is your only factor

It’s no secret that I am NOT a fan of the “passwords are dead” movement.

Too many of the tombstones are labeled “12345.” By GreatBernard – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116933238.

It seems that many of the people that are waiting the long-delayed death of the password think that biometrics is the magic solution that will completely replace passwords.

For this reason, your company might have decided to use biometrics as your sole factor of identity verification and authentication.

Or perhaps your company took a different approach, and believes that multiple factors—perhaps all five factors—are required to truly verify and/or authenticate an individual. Use some combination of biometrics, secure documents such as driver’s licenses, geolocation, “something you do” such as a particular swiping pattern, and even (horrors!) knowledge-based authentication such as passwords or PINs.

This naturally shapes your positioning and messaging.

  • The single factor companies will argue that their approach is very fast, very secure, and completely frictionless. (Sound familiar?) No need to drag out your passport or your key fob, or to turn off your VPN to accurately indicate your location. Biometrics does it all!
  • The multiple factor companies will argue that ANY single factor can be spoofed, but that it is much, much harder to spoof multiple factors at once. (Sound familiar?)

So position yourself however you need to position yourself. Again, be prepared to change if your single factor solution adopts a second factor.

A final thought

Every company has its own way of approaching a problem, and your company is no different. As you prepare to market your products, survey your product, your customers, and your prospects and choose the correct positioning (and messaging) for your own circumstances.

And if you need help with biometric positioning and messaging, feel free to contact the biometric product marketing expert, John E. Bredehoft. (Full-time employment opportunities via LinkedIn, consulting opportunities via Bredemarket.)

In the meantime, take care of yourself, and each other.

Jerry Springer. By Justin Hoch, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16673259.