News and insight into biometric identification and authentication

Australia looks at facial recognition for law enforcement

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Victoria, a southeast state in Australia, is about to launch a face recognition system called iFace to assist its law enforcement personnel in apprehending wanted people. But experts warn that the technology is not yet advanced enough to be used as evidence in court, according to an IT Wire article.

One such expert, senior photographic technologist for the FBI Richard Vorder Bruegge, spoke his warnings at the Biometrics Institute’s 11th Australian conference where he was a keynote speaker.


Bruegge’s main point in his warning of how facial recognition technology is used in law enforcement revolves around its relatively high false negative and false positive rates wherein the chances of the wrong suspect being charged or the right suspect being let go are too high to accept.

While Australian officials in favor of using the technology are still pushing for an increase in use, they do acknowledge the early purposes must be limited to investigation and intelligence gathering as well s make sure agencies utilizing the technology are properly disciplined in its use.

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Luxand announced release of a free, downloadable version of its Blink! facial recognition software. The software provides as a biometric-based login service Windows 7 and Windows Vista operating systems via a user’s regular webcam. In addition to authenticating the individual accessing the computer, Blink! also takes and records a still image of each person trying to access the computer to help prevent unauthorized access, and touts the ability to correctly recognize stored faces despite poor lighting conditions or basic changes in a user’s look such as glasses or hair cuts.  

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Biometric Intelligence & Identification Technologies has announced it has been awarded a contract with the Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association (MSA) for providing facial recognition systems to each county’s sheriff’s department as well as a number of individual police departments in the state.

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A facial recognition system developed by California-based biometric technology developer Airborne Biometrics Group (ABG) is seeing use in a number of industries including government, casinos, transportation and corporations, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal article.

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Biometric Intelligence and Identification (BI2) Technologies, a Massachusetts-based technology developer, has announced the release of its new iPhone-based multi-modal biometric solution called MORIS.

MORIS, which stands for mobile offender recognition and information system, uses both facial recognition and iris recognition and will be first implemented at the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department in Massachusetts.

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Animetrics has announced the release of a new facial recognition authentication service available on certain mobile phones.

The service, called FaceR CredentialME, is available on devices using the Android, Windows Mobile and RIM operating systems on the Sprint 3G or 4G networks and was launched in conjunction with Troy Security Solutions, a mobile products and solutions provider.

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The Security Industry Association (SIA), a member-based group that advocates on behalf of the security industry in the U.S., has publicly opposed a Bill in Alaska that restricts biometric technology in the state, according to a Security Info Watch article.

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