BIPA, Meet CIPA: Identity News Digest

Welcome to FindBiometrics’ digest of identity industry news. Here’s what you need to know about the world of digital identity and biometrics today:

Digital ID

A consortium of six European countries has announced plans for a digital wallet pilot aligned with the aims of the European Union’s digital identity wallet program. The consortium comprises organizations from Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, and Norway. It is being led by the Nordic-Baltic eID Project (“NOBID”), and features technology partners including Thales and iProov. Read the full story on Mobile ID World.

Findynet Cooperative, a consortium of Finnish tech companies, financial services organizations, and the Kela social security agency, will use a €3 million government grant to develop a self-sovereign identity network aimed at letting participants securely store and discretely share information, with a strong focus on financial data and data pertaining to professional qualifications and credentials. Interoperability is a key concern in the project, with administrators aiming to ensure that data can be stored across various digital wallet services.

Strategic Partnerships

AlertEnterprise, a California-based Identity and Access Management company, has entered into a partnership with Sentry Enterprises that will see it offer the latter’s SentryCard through its solutions portfolio. SentryCard is an identity card that features an embedded fingerprint sensor for user verification, and supports contactless reading at access points. Sentry Enterprises has been demonstrating the solution at this week’s Global Security Exchange event in Georgia.

SensorTec, a joint venture of Rheinmetall AG and Dermalog, will make its debut at this week’s InCabin tradeshow in Brussels. Its parent companies founded Rheinmetall Dermalog SensorTec GmbH with the aim of combining Rheinmetall’s automotive expertise with Dermalog’s biometric technology to offer driver monitoring solutions that can help to prevent accidents. InCabin is part of the AutoSens trade fair, and is dedicated to in-cabin monitoring and AI technologies.

Certifications and Independent Testing

Jumio has achieved SOC2 Type 2 certification for its Jumio KYX platform. The achievement comes after Jumio previously obtained ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and PCI DSS certifications. The company had also achieved SOC2 Type 2 certification for its Jumio Transaction Monitoring solution in 2020; the latest certification applies to its platform as a whole.

IDEMIA is celebrating a strong performance in recent testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in which its facial recognition technology achieved the top ranking with respect to False Match Rates between different demographic groups. IDEMIA asserted that its algorithm “identifies all subjects equally well, regardless of demographic,” an important achievement amid heightened concerns about the racial biases of some facial recognition systems.

Executive Appointments

Sift has named Mary Writz, a former ForgeRock executive, as its new SVP of Product. Sift is an anti-fraud specialist, offering businesses a “Digital Trust & Safety Suite” that includes support for biometric authentication. Writz had served at ForgeRock for a little over four years, starting as VP of Product Management and rising to the role of VP of Product, Consumer Identity. Previous experiences include senior roles with IBM and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Precise Biometrics’ Board of Directors has appointed Fredrik Sjöholm from a position as VP of Sales to the role of CCO of its “Algo” business. At the same time, Patrick Höijer, who was named CEO earlier this year, will now additionally serve as CCO of Precise’s “Digital Identity” business. In announcing the changes, the company explained that they are aimed at effecting “a strengthened focus on Precise’s two business segments,” adding that they will also result in the further integration of EastCoast – acquired by Precise in late 2021 – into the Digital Identity segment.

The General Services Administration has appointed a new director to oversee the implementation of its Login.gov service. The project’s previous acting director, J. Amos Stone, left the position in February, right around the peak of the controversy sparked by the IRS’s plan to make biometric onboarding mandatory for those filing their taxes online – a separate digital transformation effort. As FCW’s Natalie Alms reports, the new Login.gov director is Dan Lopez, who previously led the city of Philadelphia’s software engineering department.

Airport Biometrics

Germany’s IDnow has joined the International Air Transport Association’s Accelerate@IATA 2022 accelerator program, through which IDnow is now contributing to the IATA One ID working group. IATA One ID is aimed at establishing standards to streamline the passenger journey using biometric, contactless identification processes. IDnow, as a selfie-based onboarding specialist, brings some biometrics expertise to the table.

BIPA… and CIPA

Walmart is now facing a class action lawsuit under Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), with Plaintiff James Luthe alleging that the retailer collects and stores customers’ biometric data without obtaining their written consent, as BIPA requires. The lawsuit comes after reached a $10 million settlement last year concerning a different BIPA case brought by employees. The latest case is more scandalous, with the class action suit alleging that Walmart uses software from Clearview AI, the Silicon Valley startup that is now infamous for its trawling of the internet and social media to collect biometric data, and its dealings with law enforcement agencies.

Bank of America, TD Ameritrade, TD Bank, and Capital One are facing separate lawsuits concerning their use of voice biometrics technology to authenticate customers calling into their phone lines, which is alleged to violate the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA). As ThinkAdvisor’s Jeff Berman reports, all of the lawsuits were filed by the same pair of lawyers, Joshua B. Swigart and Daniel G. Shay, on behalf of various groups of plaintiffs.

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September 13, 2022 – by Alex Perala

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