New Zealand border officials are seeing half of travelers through airports use SmartGates, the automated checkpoints that use the chip on e-passports and facial recognition to confirm a traveler’s identity, according to a Dominion Post article. In response to its growing success at the airports, the New Zealand government has been considering lowering the age […]

The Nigerian Government has announced new plans for biometric registration of its citizens that would be stored in a central database and yield biometric identity cards and a nine-digit unique identification number for each citizen, according to an All Africa article. The new program is not a new idea to Nigerians, as the country has […]

Nuance Communications, a developer of voice-recognition solutions, has announced that two of its voice-recognition technologies are being integrated into a physical access control solution from security and automation technology developer FST21. The Nuance solutions, speech engine Nuance Recognizer and verification solution Nuance Verifier, are being incorporated into FST21’s SafeRise, which utilizes a user’s face and […]

From the bag phone, to the brick phone to the flip phone, the mobile phone has evolved quite a bit in the last 25 years. The overarching trend had been toward smaller and smaller devices, but this preoccupation with size seems to have reached a plateau. The focus now is squarely on adding capabilities. For […]

Canada and the United States are in talks to share border screening information to help bolster security between the two countries. The countries would use a biometric face recognition scanner to identify possible criminals trying to cross the border. The scanner would then be linked to a computer database with images of known wanted people […]

The Malaysian Government is considering utilizing facial recognition in conjunction with an automated plate number recognition system in an effort to enhance crime prevention in the country, according to an article from The Malay Mail. The country’s police force would be acting as the lead government group in the introduction of the technology though other […]

By Steven Grant, business development manager, 3M security systems division As the growing volume of international travel has demanded greater attention from border control authorities, governments and their immigration ministries face many decisions on how to design programs that process travelers more efficiently–without sacrificing security. The current system, in which customs and/or immigration officials manually […]

New Jersey is releasing a new driver license that includes 25 new security features that help prevent the Id card from being counterfeited. The new ID also comes into compliance of The REAL ID Act of 2005, which establishes federal security for identification. New Jersey license applicants will also be run through a facial recognition […]

A face recognition app is available for $7 download to an Apple iPhone 4 so long as it has been jailbroken, the act of hacking into a phone’s firmware to enable a user to bypass limits or controls set by developers, according to a Dvice article. The application, called RecognizeMe, utilizes the front facing camera […]

Privacy risk … or a fear of the biometrics boogey man? It’s a question that came up in Denver late last year when the health club chain, 24 Hour Fitness, introduced a fingerprint-based check-in system to replace its membership cards. The move added to the debate over whether systems that use fingerprint, face and eye […]