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 […]

Hoyos Group has introduced its new handheld, portable iris scanning solution that they claim is the first geared towards consumer use, according to a CNN Money article. The device, called EyeLock, offers a USB connectable iris authentication service that will auto fill the password field for any password protected site online. Additionally, as an added […]

The Biometrics Institute, an Australia-based professional organization representing and promoting biometric companies and organizations, has launched its 2011 Industry Survey. The group is asking its members and other stake holders for information surrounding their own views of the current industry and the expected future specific to both the Australia and New Zealand region as well […]

In a major move towards biometric registration of its citizens, the Mexican government has begun a project that will see the iris and fingerprint data collected from all children in the state of Guanajuato, according to a Singularity Hub article. The new collections are coming off the end of a program that began in September […]

IrisGuard, a Jordan-based developer of iris recognition systems, has landed a contract for supplying the Jordanian government technology for capturing iris data of each visitor to the country, according to a Bloomberg article. Such projects are not new to IrisGuard as in 2002 they implemented a similar system in the United Arab Emirates to track […]

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a recommendation for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to better their use of biometric technology. As the DOD is budgeted to spend $3.5 billion on the technology between 2007 and 2015, the GAO was tasked with determining how much the DOD has taken standards and interoperability into […]

Among the tools U.S. armed forces had at their disposal to ensure they had the correct identity of Osama bin Laden after killing him were biometric scanners such as facial recognition, according to a Wired article. The specific tool used by military personnel to be sure they had the right person was an updated version […]

By Salvatore D’Agostino, CSCIP, IDmachines LLC IDmachines and other colleagues attended a workshop last week at the Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md. on the draft FIPS 201-2. The workshop enabled NIST, other government agencies and industry to discuss the initial changes and to propose other changes to PIV […]

The biometric collection in India associated with its National Population Register (NPR), a program being run by the Unique Identification Authority of India that includes the collection of photographs, fingerprints and iris scans during the 2011 Census, has received a poor response form the country’s citizens due to low awareness resulting from a lack of […]

Five police agencies around the U.S. have been utilizing a handheld, fingerprint-based biometric scanner as part of an FBI pilot program of its FBI Next Generation Identification System, according to a Pittsburg Post Gazette article. The new system works by increasing a speed at which a state or city police force can get federal criminal […]