Two whistleblowers offer a rare window into the root causes of the subprime mortgage meltdown. Eileen Foster, a former senior executive at Countrywide Financial, and Richard Bowen, a former vice president at Citigroup, tell Steve Kroft the companies ignored their repeated warnings about defective, even fraudulent mortgages. The result, experts say, was a cascading wave of mortgage defaults for which virtually no high-ranking Wall Street executives have been prosecuted.

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Plans are in place to use voice biometrics first for password re-sets and high-risk transactions such as ACH and wire transfers for business members. The solution is then used in the call center to authenticate members asking for help from member service representatives, according to Desert Schools.

The opt-in process for authentication begins with the member calling the system and basically leaving a voice mail that takes about 50 seconds to complete, at which point their unique characteristics are then extracted mathematically and put into a voice template, said Gary Laieski, chief information officer at Desert Schools.

The member then gets a call back and request for information such as a member number or PIN to be used. After verification confirms that it’s the same voice, members are good to go, according to the credit union. The process should only take 10 seconds or so. It also provides a means of authentication that while relatively new to the financial services industry, has actually been around for a while, much like its fingerprint counterpart.

Some kinks in the system still need to be worked out, however the Credit Union says that it’s only a matter of time before everything works smoother and faster. It should also be noted that they are taking the correct approach and making this opt-in rather than opt-out.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for reform of the Federal Reserve, is sharply criticizing the Federal Reserve today after Bloomberg news reported that the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions during the 2008 bailout. Kucinich recorded a video for his website before going to the floor of the House of Representatives to call upon Congress to reclaim its Constitution primacy over monetary policy.

More at Bloomberg.

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.