News and insight into biometric identification and authentication

NH legislature sides with SIA on biometrics

Friday, March 19, 2010

New Hampshire lawmakers voted down a bill Thursday that would have banned the use of biometrics on ID cards for government agencies or private entities with the exception of employee ID cards. The bill contained language that would have disallowed the practice of businesses requiring the submission of biometric information as a precondition for a business relationship.


The Security Industry Association had campaigned against the bill working to educate the state’s legislators to help them better understand the effects of passing such legislation. The organization’s stance was that the bill was formed out of misconceptions surrounding biometrics and public dangers.

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Shigeomi Koshimizu, an associate professor at the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology in Tokyo has developed the technology. A seat pressure map to generates 39 indices that are used to uniquely identify a subject’s posterior. Results so far have been encouraging, with average false reject rates of 2.2% and false accept rates of 1.1%.

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