Faces In and Out of Focus: 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:

Onboarding

Kompliant will integrate authID’s Verified solution into its onboarding and risk scoring platform. Verified uses facial recognition to match an end user’s selfie image to their image on an official identity document; an upgrade announced near the start of this year delivered speed and performance improvements. Kompliant, meanwhile, is a financial services-focused startup that was incubated through Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital, and recently raised $14 million in a seed funding round.

ComplyCube has upgraded its document verification system’s ability to read Arabic IDs, asserting that it has improved “accuracy and success rates” by up to 98.7 percent. The news comes after ComplyCube added facial recognition to its identity verification platform earlier this year. With respect to Arabic ID reading, the UK-based company says that its platform supports IDs from most Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE, and Qatar.

Law Enforcement Biometrics

The European Digital Rights Network (EDRi), an advocacy group, is urging Members of the European Parliament to reject a European Commission proposal that would incentivize the creation of a facial recognition database for use by police agencies across all European Union member states. EDRi says that such a turn of events would pose serious risks to civil rights in the EU.

A prominent candidate in the mayoral race for Lima, Peru, has proposed the use of biometric surveillance to fight crime, asserting that even when faces are covered, technologies exist that can recognize an individual “because of the way he stands, because of the way he walks.” Yuri Castro made the proposal during an event dedicated to discussions of new policy ideas, in which he also advocated for the conversion of unused government land into “social housing”.

Homeland Security

Sean O’Donnell, the Acting Inspector General for the Pentagon, has announced that he will undertake an internal review concerning whistleblower allegations that the military allowed into the country fleeing Afghans who pose serious security threats. O’Donnell is responding to a joint letter from Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) demanding answers about a claim that 324 evacuees had been accepted into the United States despite their placement on the Defense Department’s Biometrically Enabled Watchlist (BEWL).

Biometrics Controversy

Workers from Google and Amazon organized street protests on Thursday evening decrying the companies’ joint collaboration on ‘Project Nimbus’, a contract with the Israeli government. Protestors object to the mysterious AI project’s potential support for Israeli military and surveillance operations in the Palestinian territories, including the potential use of facial recognition. Google says they are misrepresenting the contract, which is meant to support digital workloads for the Israeli government’s finance, healthcare, transportation, and education agencies.

Look At Me! (But Not Too Closely)

Honor, the Chinese smartphone brand, has introduced an innovative biometric recognition tool in its new Honor 50 smartphone that manages to avoid the use of facial recognition. Perfectly tailored to our narcissistic age, the phone’s Solo Cut Vlog mode is designed to autofocus on a specific individual being filmed, even when the person is part of a larger group. To do so, it uses “Person Re-Identification Technology” that looks at multiple metrics including the individual’s hair, clothes, and posture. According to Stuff, some aspect of the individual’s face is involved in the process, too; but it isn’t true facial recognition.

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September 9, 2022 – by Alex Perala