Daon and ID R&D Get Patents, Dermalog Gets Jenetric – 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:

Dermalog to Acquire Jenetric

Germany-based Dermalog has established an agreement to acquire the business operations of its compatriot, Jenetric. The latter is known primarily for its optical Thin-Film Transistor (“TFT”) technology, which enables the contactless capture of high-quality fingerprints. Following the acquisition, Jenetric will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary under the brand name “Dermalog Jenetric”; and according to a statement announcing the move, Jenetric’s employees will retain their positions in the company’s offices in the city of Jena. Dermalog CEO Günther Mull says “Jenetric’s TFT technology, in combination with Dermalog’s proven liveness detection, will provide substantial value to customers in both the government and private sectors.”

Advocacy Groups Demand Canadian Facial Recognition Moratorium

A coalition of privacy and civil rights groups are calling on the Canadian government to implement a moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology until a comprehensive regulatory regime is put in place. The coalition, which includes the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, and the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Commission, made their argument in an open letter addressed to the country’s privacy and industry ministers, arguing that Canada’s Parliament “isn’t doing enough” in its response to a recent report on AI and facial recognition by the Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

Indonesia Pilots Facial Recognition on Public Transportation

The Indonesian government is piloting a facial recognition system designed to identify passengers on public transportation. A collaboration between the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform (“PAN-RB”) Ministry and the Ministry of Transportation, the system is currently being tested by the state-run airport operator PT Angkasa Pura II and the state-owned train service provider PT Kereta Api Indonesia. PAN-RB Minister Abdullah Azwar Anas said the effort stems from presidential directives to implement impactful digital public service reforms.

Fijian Town Prepares Biometric Surveillance Deployment

Labasa, a small town in Fiji, may soon become the first in the country to deploy a CCTV facial recognition system. The system is meant to identify any individual on a watch list and automatically notify officials at the Labasa Police Station. It will be implemented in partnership with Bondwell, a domestic IT retailer, and financed through funds raised at this year’s carnival event, slated to run from July 7 to 15. “All this is being done for the sake of creating a safe town for all, especially the business community,” said Satish Kumar, the chairman of the Northern Duavata Crime Prevention committee.

Notarize to Rebrand With New Identity Tools

Notarize, the company behind the internet’s biggest notary network, is rebranding as “Proof”, effective in August. It will also introduce new identity verification tools to its platform, including a biometric system that matches end users’ selfie photos to images of their official ID. It will combine those capabilities with a new risk scoring system that will assess a variety of metrics, including user locations and mobile carrier networks, for fraud signals. The planned platform revamp comes after Notarize raised $130 million in a Series D funding round in 2021.

USPTO Grants Patents for Daon, ID R&D

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has approved two new Daon patents – #17/959,731 and #17/971,961 – that concern technology designed to enhance the verification of government-issued IDs. In announcing its procurement of the patents, Daon noted that in the United States alone, are are more than 550 different official identity documents; and that document forgery is the most common form of identity fraud. Daon CEO Tom Grissen also noted the importance of the document verification technology in the company’s new SaaS platform, TrustX. “These newly issued patents reflect our commitment to innovation and solidify our position at the forefront of SaaS identity solutions,” he said. Grissen spoke to FindBiometrics last year about Daon’s technological advances in biometrics, among other topics.

ID R&D has been granted a new US patent for a novel approach to the detection of presentation attacks against a facial recognition system. The approach takes a cue from innovative approaches to the development of artificial intelligence that use visual transformers to focus AI algorithms on the most important data during neural network training. ID R&D’s solution likewise trains a liveness detection algorithm to focus only on the most relevant parts of a face image when scanning for signs of a presentation attack.

Jordan’s MEPS Launches Zwipe Biometric Cards

Jordan-based Middle East Payment Services (“MEPS”) has announced the commercial launch of fingerprint-scanning payment cards based on the Zwipe Pay platform, as part of a collaboration with Zwipe and Mastercard. The commercial launch follows a successful pilot, with MEPS having first signed on to become a biometric card distributor in the spring of 2021. News of the commercial launch comes after Kuwait International Bank’s announcement last month that it would offer biometric Visa cards to its “VIP” customers.

Apple Rolls Out Passkey Support

Apple has enabled passkey-based login for any websites supporting Apple ID credentials, but only on select operating systems, including the beta of the forthcoming iOS 17. This means that users can log into Apple.com, icloud.com, and other sites including Reddit by using their iPhone or MacBook’s biometric authentication system, or by scanning a QR code — and without having to enter a password.

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June 21, 2023 – by Alex Perala