Blogs: biometrics

There is a role for technology in gun safety.

This is not the forum to discuss the politics, morality or civility of the question of guns or to weigh in for or against. It is however relevant that there are technologies available that will reduce gun violence today. What is needed are some prudent steps, transformational thinking and innovation in our approach to safety.

Perhaps unexpectedly it is the most ubiquitous of technologies available today, the smartphone, that may offer a potential answer, or at least a direction, that may both satisfy the gun owner and provide safety to our communities and our public safety responders, if not today, in a not too distant tomorrow.

'Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.' Your voiceprint may have been passively collected for a voice recognition biometric data system via voicemail or recordings made while talking to commercial service providers like banks, cell phone companies and cable TV companies. A US 'State Justice Agency' committed to deploy a pilot system for 'studies' using Russian SpeechPro voice recognition software that can match millions of voices to identities. It can store 2 million samples. Law enforcement was provided with voice data collection tips, but VoiceGrid Nation needs only a minimum of 3 seconds for speech pattern analysis. In 5 seconds, it can search/match in 10,000 voice samples.

You’ve undoubtedly seen iris scanners being tricked by some high-tech contact or even via a scavenged eyeball in action/adventure or thriller movies when a secret agent or criminal wants to break into a vault or other high tech facility, but at the upcoming Black Hat USA hacking conference, security researcher Javier Galbally will talk about a new vulnerability to attack iris recognition systems. This seems interesting from a security and a privacy point of view, but especially thought-provoking in light of the FBI’s plans to test a database “for searching iris scans nationwide to more quickly track criminals.” 

High tech police gadgets: Warning! You are under surveillance. It may be through Peacemaker police surveillance vans parked in your neighborhood, or through "sound DNA" or even heartbeat detectors. There are even gadgets that are meant to be deterrents for anti-social individuals; these devices emit sonic blasts that can be heard only by teenagers.

IBM has just published its top five predictions for technology in 2016. And, by golly, what a load of utterly bogus, crazy rubbish they are. "5 in 5"? More like Zero in five. Energy from water? An end to passwords? Mind control? All these and more debunked in The Long View...
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Michael Yon travels with U.S. combat troops overseas and has learned much about smartphones as pocket spies with actionable intelligence that is trackable and could mean life or death. Yon may start to report from a new war zone, the Mexican border which he believes may pose a greater threat to the USA than Afghanistan. Yet instead of al Qaeda trying to use actionable intelligence from mobile phones, Yon might face smartphone tracking threats from drug cartels.

Tracking and identifying human shadows by satellite images? Sniffing out terrorists? Biometric technology used in the past still seems like something out of the future. Biometrics may replace the need for ID.

Biometric recognition technologies are important to U.S. intelligence and continue to emerge. Biometric recognition is not just something from a fictional spy-thriller. Here's a look at current and future biometric technology.

I don't know about you, but I'm fed up of reading news about how yet another company has carelessly lost yet another batch of private customer data. How hard can it be to make sure that the data are encrypted? Actually, pretty hard, as it turns out -- at least for 'regular' users. Enter: automatic, hardware encryption. I've been testing an Apricorn Aegis Bio: a 2.5" drive, shock mounted inside a USB enclosure, with a fingerprint scanner built into the case. Let's see how it performed...

I remember the Internet when it was in its nascent stages. Slow, limited and unpredictable. Today's Net is a far cry from those early days and it's become an integral part of our lives. One of the favorite pastimes of the Net savvy is online shopping. You can get literally anything on the Net these days. Passwords are usually required somewhere when Internet shopping, which brings up the issue of security.