From Reuters, A Polish priest has installed an electronic reader in his church for schoolchildren to leave their fingerprints in order to monitor their attendance at mass, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily said on Friday. “This is comfortable. We don’t have to stand in a line to get the priest’s signature (confirming our presence at the […]
Tags: biometrics, culture, religion, tracking
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It’s too late to write anything so I’ll just link-dump. Disturbing. Britain’s cops have the largest DNA database in the world, and it’s full of innocent people who were arrested but not charged, or charged but not convicted (the EU’s Court of Human Rights have ordered this practice to stop, but the cops refuse to […]
Tags: biometrics, law, privacy
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Wired had an excellent article on deCODE Genetics, which has filed for bankruptcy and will likely be bought up by another company. The concern is that the purchasing company, driven not by passion for the industry but by profits alone, will opt to sell customer data. It reminded me of the old biometric iris scanner […]
Tags: biometrics, health, law, privacy, security
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A company called Complete Genomics was able to sequence three human genomes for $4,400 in materials… a micro-drop in the bucket compared to the $3 billion it cost to complete just one only a few years ago. They did this using more common materials, which does introduce some amount of error. However, with an error […]
Tags: biometrics, culture, security
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“Evidence that the smell of fear is real was uncovered by US scientists last year who studied the underarm secretions of 20 terrified novice skydivers and found that people appear to respond unconsciously to the sweat smell of a frightened person. Now the Telegraph reports that researchers hope a ‘fear detector’ will make it possible […]
Tags: biometrics, security, stupid
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“The FBI today is announcing a rapid DNA initiative,” said Louis Grever, executive assistant director of the FBI’s science and technology branch, during his keynote presentation at the Biometric Consortium Conference in Tampa. The FBI is expanding beyond its traditional fingerprint collection practices to develop a new biometrics system that will include DNA records, 3-D […]
Tags: biometrics, culture, privacy, security, software
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The Department of Homeland Security is funding a project called Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST. The idea is that sensors and cameras located at security checkpoints would measure the natural physiological signals coming from your body — your heart rate, breathing, eye movement, body temperature and fidgeting. Researchers believe the culmination of which would […]
Tags: biometrics, culture, security
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The concept of reading a person like a barcode is not a new one, it has come up constantly for me every time I deal with people calling me “Satan’s Mouthpiece” (yes, I got emails calling me that). But the difference between my RFID implants and a generic DNA reader that can cheaply, quickly, and […]
Tags: biometrics, culture, health, privacy, security
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Technologies designed to quickly test a persons race for the purpose of allowing political asylum have been developed and are currently being used by the UK Border Agency. Science has obtained Border Agency documents showing that isotope analyses of hair and nail samples will also be conducted “to help identify a person’s true country of […]
Tags: biometrics, culture, law, privacy, security, tracking, travel
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The AISight™ Cognitive Video Analytics™ software takes visual input from either a live camera or recorded video, learns what activities and behaviors are normal, and generates real-time alerts that notify appropriate security personnel of potentially threatening behaviors. Unlike rules-based video-analytics software, the intelligent AISight solution identifies threats and behaviors that were not previously defined or […]
Tags: biometrics, cameras, privacy, security, tracking
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