Integrated Biometrics has won a major contract with the Brazilian government, the company has announced. It’s going to provide over 13,000 of its Watson Mini fingerprint scanners to help register voters over the next couple of years.
The Watson Minis will be distributed via regional partner Akiyama Soluções Tecnológicas, which was selected by Brazil’s Tribunal Superior Eleitoral to provide the technology for voter enrollment. While the government does not currently have any specific plans to introduce biometric polling, such a move is expected in the years to come, and the fingerprint scanning is being conducted in anticipation of that. Part of the motivation may lie in a desire to avoid complaints from eligible voters that they were not given sufficient notice and time to enroll their data for biometric polling, as was recently seen in Kyrgyzstan’s recent national election, while the Philippines’ Commission on Elections desperately seeks to avoid a similar fate as its own biometric polling program takes shape.
For its part, Brazil appears to be a particularly forward-thinking country when it comes to new technologies; it was the first to introduce electronic voting in the year 2000, and its airports are early adopters of facial biometric traveler screening. Meanwhile, Integrated Biometrics boasts of ISO 9001 certification, and has seen some other high-profile integrations of its sensors this year, with the new Brazil deal further bolstering its credibility in the market.
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October 22, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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