The first biometric ATM in Europe is now available at Poland’s cooperative BPS bank. Utilizing a finger vein authentication system by Hitachi, customers now merely need to place their finger on the pad and the machine will read your pattern and dispense money to you.

The company says that an infrared light is passed through the finger to detect a unique pattern of micro-veins beneath the surface – which is then matched with a pre-registered profile to verify an individual’s identity.

“This is a substantially more reliable technique than using fingerprints,” Peter Jones, Hitachi’s head of security and solutions in Europe, told CNN.

“Our tests indicate there is a one in a million false acceptance rate — that’s as good as iris scanning, which is generally regarded as the most secure method.”

Unlike fingerprints, which leave a trace and can be potentially reproduced, finger veins are impossible to replicate, according to Jones, because they are beneath the surface of the skin.

Amusingly, Jones also added that it cannot be read if the finger had been chopped off. So, all the stories you hear about that, it isn’t possible for this to happen. Blood has to be coursing through the veins for it to work.

This may be a first for Europe, but Asia is far ahead of the curve on fingerprint ATMs.

Jones says that there are now over 80,000 biometric ATMs in Japan, currently used by more than 15 million customers.

The machines are also dotted around parts of Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and even parts of Africa — where, according to banking analyst Stessa Cohen, they are preferred by rural workers living in remote areas, who are not accustomed to carrying bank cards.

So far though, the technology has failed to penetrate banking markets in the West. Cohen, who works for industry analysts Gartner, believes there are a number of data privacy issues that commercial banks have failed to address.

No one knows what is going to happen to the technology, where the customer information is going to be stored or what will happen if a case of fraud does occur. The false acceptance rate worries many privacy advocates considering that the statistics given means that in a Europe filled with 30 million people, 30 other people could access your account. While that may be an acceptable number to a company, it isn’t to most people.

I’m really not looking forward to have the crap beat out of me so a mugger can drag me to the ATM and take my money. Worse yet, the mugger doesn’t know it doesn’t work with chopped off fingers, so he comes back to kill you because he couldn’t get your money. It’s a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done. Dual or triple identification would be a start.

Biometric ID cards are arising in many nations around the world despite the protests of many. In the past two months there have been numerous stories published concerning various governments pushing biometric ID as the way to protect people from terrorism. What it really does is create a nice database on the population of a country, making everyone identifiable and eroding privacy.

The Ugandan ID is set to include data on tribe, clan, village, and parish, as well as information on spouses. There will also be a provision of up to four wives plus children.

Turkey introduced biometric IDs that will have a digital picture, but no fingerprints on June 1st. Regular passports will be red, while diplomatic passports will be black.

Mozambique introduced their biometric ID in April after a short delay. The Belgian firm, Semlex, fixed the problems that they created with spelling errors and the prevention of Mozambican names from fitting on new biometric passports. The Belgians, however, can’t seem to hang on to their own ID cards, with more than 200,000 people losing them last year. Most of these were in the 18-25 year old range. Girls were particularly susceptible since they left their ID in open handbags

Zambia has introduced a multipurpose electronic national registration card. Kenya is set to employ a similar measure. The cards can be used for voting, accessing banking services, and as driver’s licenses.

Algerian passports now require women to remove their hijab for photographic purposes. A full face is required to meet international standards on their new biometric passports and many men are livid at this decision. The government has said they will not back down on the decision. Many believe it is the politicians objecting to this and not the women themselves.

While not quite a national ID card just yet, voters in Nepal are now required to have photographs and fingerprints taken, which will then be placed on a card with a unique ID number. The information will be stored on a national civil registration list.

Russia is fingerprinting, photographing, and licensing migrant laborers. If you are a highly skilled laborer, however, you will be excluded. Ah, the elite are above the system again.

The Philippines’ new scheme will be run by the postal service. Foreign residents in Saudi Arabia will soon be required to register their fingerprints to access any government service

Bulgaria’s biometric ID system, which is made by Siemens, won’t scale properly. If all the printing stations across the country are running, the system gets blocked. Instead of fixing the software problem, Bulgaria is, instead, running half the systems in consecutive shifts. The system is, essentially, broken and many people cannot obtain their biometric passports. People are waiting months to get their ID. Under the new system, IDs were supposed to be issued within 30 days.

In the United States, there are numerous fights against ID systems every day. There are major fights over a national work ID. Known as The Biometric Enrollment, Locally-stored Information, and Electronic Verification of Employment (BELIEVE) System, it is being pushed by politicians in Washington. It’s riddled with privacy and civil liberties concerns. There are also concerns that, if Americans are forced into a national ID, the US Supreme Court will like the idea, leaving Americans out in the cold.

The United States will also be issuing new green cards. First, they will actually be green. Second, holographic images, and laser engraved fingerprint information will be stored on them. RFID chips will also be used so that customs and border patrol agents can read the card at a distance. Naturally, no one has given a thought about how easy it is to clone a card you can read from far away.

The former airport Clear ID program is back up and running. It is now known as Alclear. The company also wants to expand the ID program to more places than just airports, including places of work.

Biometrics may be here to stay as an accepted practice. IEEE has created a Certified Biometrics Professional program. We learn of new biometric ID schemes every day, from many different countries. While the UK may be scrapping theirs for now, the USA is still fighting to implement one. Its citizens, however, vow to keep protesting against a national ID.

Britain and America may still end up with a national ID. It seems inevitable with so many people willing to line up and give their privacy away just so they can feel better about themselves and claim that they helped a bit with security. Too bad most of it is security theater and they willingly give away hard fought civil liberties in the process.

All you have to do is give big brother a big enough smile and he’ll give you a free ice cream. Facial database FTW and all they had to do is offer a little ice cream to you.

If you happen to be going to Cannes this summer (and, really, if you aren’t, you should be) mega-conglomerate Unilever is ready to tempt you with a treat straight out of Minority Report. The company has set up a vending machine that lets anyone who walks by score some free ice cream. The price? Just smile for the machine’s facial recognition software, which will determine your age, gender and emotion. Only the most happy will get ice cream. The rest? We don’t really know, but we seem to remember something having to do with stolen eyeballs that can be used to trick such systems.

The “Share Happy” machine can sense when it’s being approached, and “captures and measures your smile 15 times a second, and when it’s wide enough, rewards you with ice cream.” Once you hit the jackpot, you can share your winning smile with friends via Facebook. As to who Unilever’s sharing it with, and what they’re doing with it, we can only imagine. But, hey, free ice cream seems like a fair price for helping educate the smart machines and help them build their dossier, right?

From ubergizmo:

The iPhone is equipped with a facial recognition system, dubbed MORIS, that allows the police to snap a picture of the person, which is sent back and compared against a database of bad guys that the state is currently compiling, finding out if you’re on a wanted list or not. While it’s currently using facial recognition, there is also an iris identification feature in the works, along with a fingerprint reader. Of course, it’ll be interesting to see if the iPhone’s camera is good enough to capture minute details of the iris and fingerprints in order to make a positive match, but we’ll see.

Iris biometrics, as well as birth date and name are being used to identify patients at a Bronx health clinic. The iris scan is required of all patients at the clinic.

Eye Controls is the company behind the technology.

Quietly, the New South Wales government in Australia has been collecting data on its citizens with the goal being a compilation of every person’s face in the country. The need for such a system is argued to be so that every CCTV camera can recognize an individual as soon as they are captured on CCTV.

Experts said yesterday few people realised their facial features were being recorded in an RTA database of drivers licence photos that the Government has allowed both state and federal police to access

The federal body CrimTrac has asked NSW for its database so it can be mined nationally by police using the facial recognition information contained in it.

Problems will arise from such a monumental undertaking as facial recognition is not anywhere near 100% accuracy.

University experts in facial recognition said the correct match rate was as low as 90 per cent, meaning the names of people with faces sharing a similar structure to criminals could be returned in searches.

Dr Carolyn Semmler from the University of Adelaide said police wanted to eventually use facial recognition in smart CCTV cameras allowing people to be tracked anywhere there was a camera.

While some may say that they don’t care if their information is collected so long as it prevents crime, a 90% accuracy rate is not good enough. This means that in large cities, such as London, up to 3000 people per day are wrongly identified. Will you still understand when the police barge in your house at 3am and make you and your children lie face down on the floor because you’ve been pegged as a pedophile, rapist, drug dealer or terrorist?

NSW Opposition police spokesman Mike Gallacher said most people were unaware their face had been mapped when they applied for or had their licences renewed, allowing them to potentially be tracked.

There is a fundamental problem with the government when they freely invade people’s privacy and then neglect to tell them that it is even happening. The RTA has been compiling this new database since last December, meaning that anyone who has renewed their license in that time has had their facial features mapped and placed into the database.

While this is being done in the name of national security and the prevention of using driver’s licenses fraudulently, it is a huge invasion of privacy. Before removing residents’ civil liberties, there should have been debate and discussion. Instead, the New South Wales government felt it necessary to not inform anyone of what was occurring. This is, most likely, because no one would have wanted it.

Couple the facial recognition to CCTV with the GO card, and ANPR and you’ve got a very nice system that can personally track you every single step of your day. Everyone hopes that none of this technology will be abused, however, we’ve seen time and again that it can and is on a regular basis.

I don’t intentionally break the law. I do everything possible to preserve my privacy, but being tracked and misidentified is not something I can control. I cannot trust those with the power to not abuse it, leaving me with the only recourse possible. Everyone needs to write to their MPs now while there’s still a chance to change things.

Reactions are mixed to UC Berkeley’s request for incoming freshmen to voluntarily give a DNA sample to the school.

The university has said it will send test kits to 5,500 new students to analyze genes that help control the body’s responses to alcohol, dairy products and folic acid.

The voluntary tests are intended to spur conversation about the growing field of personal genomics, not predict the likelihood of disease, university officials said Thursday.

“We thought that this would be a more engaging vehicle for discussion than having them read a book or an article,” said Mark Schlissel, dean of biology at UC Berkeley.

Yes, your vehicle for discussion will be thrown back at you as most students would rather read a book or an article than have the school waste money on kits no one will use. The problem is that UC Berkeley has chosen to give the kits to impressionable freshman who may either not know it’s voluntary or think that it’s been tested before and safe. Federal regulators can’t even agree whether the over the counter test kits are safe or accurate as some haven’t been tested by the FDA.

All DNA will be collected privately, officials said. Students will use a barcode that only they have to locate their individual results, and the university said all DNA will be incinerated after the analysis is completed.

The results of the test will be put in a secure online database where students will be able to retrieve their results by using their bar code.

Ah yes, the old, “We’ll destroy the DNA, we promise,” trick. The student still needs to take the barcode to be read so they can obtain the results. What happens if someone steals the barcode or copies it?

Students also will be able to compete to win one of four much more comprehensive personal gene scans from 23andMe Inc., a Google-backed company that has been at the center of the debate over direct-to-consumer genetic testing.

So here’s the scam from the school. They get to collect and study students’ DNA and four lucky students out of 5,500 new students will win a prize.

Still, said Khoury, “if it’s packaged well, it could be a great experience.”

Yes, students. Don’t worry. We have your best interests in mind. We’re not trying to sell you a load of horse crap and call it lemonade.

There’s no mention of how these kits will be paid for. It could come from student fees, the student themselves, or the debt ridden state of California.

The story also fails to mention what is meant by confidential and private, who will have access to the data, how long the data will be kept (data being different from the actual sample), and what else the results might be used for in the future.

Hopefully, not everyone will automatically sign up for a voluntary invasion of privacy. If they do, they have no one to blame but themselves when they later find out the data wasn’t destroyed. Once the information is given, it can never be taken back.

Found this over on Big Brother Watch.

From NPR:

Starting this summer, South Korea will require anyone over 17 to have their photographs taken and fingerprints scanned of any foreigner entering the country. As usual, diplomats will be exempt from the new law because they couldn’t ever be connected to any crimes or terrorist acts.

The South Korean government had intended to introduce the new rules in 2012, but it decided to accelerate its plans because Seoul is now set to host the Group of 20 summit this November.

Instead of stepping up security for the summit and returning to normal once it’s over, South Korea decided introduce plans that would normally have had time to be debated before being decreed law.