190 convictions in North Carolina need to be reviewed after it was found that the North Carolina crime lab has not been doing their jobs properly. Information that was material or in favor of the defense was often withheld. This has been occurring for at least 16 years.

Of the cases being reviewed, 4 are on death row, 3 have already been executed, and 5 have died in prison.

Last May, the University of California at Berkeley asked incoming freshmen to voluntarily submit blood samples for DNA testing. The university said it was to help determine which genes controlled the body’s responses to alcohol, dairy products and folic acid. The change in the policy isn’t that they won’t be requesting the samples, but that no one will receive individual results. Because the university must comply with regulations, they will only reveal the collective results of all students who give samples.

In response to a state Public Health Department ruling on how DNA samples should be handled, UC Berkeley scientists reluctantly abandoned the idea to have freshmen and transfer students individually and confidentially learn about three of their own genetic traits. Instead, only collective results for all the 1,000 or so participants will be available and discussed at the orientation seminars next month.

Mark Schlissel, UC Berkeley’s dean of biological sciences and an architect of the DNA program, said he disagreed with the state Department of Public Health’s ruling that the genetic testing required advance approval from physicians and should be done only by specially-licensed clinical labs, not by university technicians. The campus could not find labs willing to do the work and probably could not afford it anyway, Schlissel said. He also contended that the project deserved an exemption from those rules because it was an educational exercise.

The university offered to test the gene variations that affect people’s reactions to three substances: alcohol, lactose and folic acid. Students were asked to provide the school with a swab of cells from inside the mouth.

Berkeley officials contend that the test results would not be medically significant. But the program was controversial with privacy advocates and ethicists complaining that it presented an unprecedented and disturbing use of genetic data by a university.

Many students had felt that they were coerced into giving a saliva sample and that the program was not really voluntary. Berkeley has promised that they will destroy the samples once the tests are completed, however some questions still linger. Many are still unsure exactly how the samples will be used. They will have the data. Creating a new test would be easy. If students give up their DNA, they probably also give up how it’s used once it is turned over to the university.

In this year’s edition of scaring the crap out of people, the NDM-1 is supposed to be the next superbug that’s going to end the world and kill almost everyone. It’s resistant to every antibiotic out there, except two. Expect the news to highlight the fact that it’s resistant to “nearly every antibiotic,” and hyping this superbug up instead of being realistic.

Some think it will be far worse than H1N1, however, since that turned out to be more of a scare than the end of the world, it’s too early to really say whether the NDM-1 will fizzle in the same way. NDM-1 is an enzyme in bacteria that changes the DNA of the bacteria, making it difficult to combat with the normal course of antibiotics. It is typically found inside bacteria, such as e. coli, and can be spread through improper food handling and medical procedures. It is becoming more prevalent because of medical tourism to India where NDM-1 originated.

From Wired:

The lock that would seem to have thwarted them the most was actually one of the easiest to crack. The Biolock Model 333 is a sleek £126 ($200) lock that combines a mechanical cylinder and fingerprint reader.

It appears that BP is continuing to lie to the people, particularly about the dispersant they used. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see if the anger and doubt of the people turns into health issues and a mass migration out of the area. It will be years before we truly know the impact on the gulf.

Meanwhile, NOAA Administrator, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, is telling us that the fish in the gulf are safe to eat. Apparently, Dr. Lubchenco needs to go back and crack open a biology textbook before she can even think that Americans will swallow this line of bunk.

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.

From Automaton:

When Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence was a kid, he would peer through the bionic eye of his Six Million Dollar Man action figure. After a shooting accident left him partially blind, he decided to create his own electronic eye. Now he calls himself Eyeborg.

Spence’s bionic eye contains a battery-powered, wireless video camera. Not only can he record everything he sees just by looking around, but soon people will be able to log on to his video feed and view the world through his right eye.

Eyeborg Phase II from eyeborg on Vimeo.

LED eye bionic jumping, teaser footage of experimenting with eye-camera prototype, action!

Rob Spence is a filmmaker who lost his eye and decided to replace it with a wireless video camera. .

Check out Kosta Grammatis glancing about nervously as Fox News guffaws about our bionic lab.

This was the most emotionally disturbing video I have ever done!
A flight over the BP Slick Source where I saw at least 100 Dolphins in the oil, some dying. I also photographed a Sperm Whale covered in oil all around it’s blow hole.

Please spread this around the world. Send me any links to places it gets posted so I can follow.
I want to piss off the world. Who will answer for these gentle creatures?

Sadly, no one will ever spend a single day in jail over any of this. Dolphins, whales, turtles, fish, and all manner of other birds and animals will die. Entire species will be gone, yet no one will ever be held accountable.

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?