New Samsung Sensors, New Partnerships, and a Big Contract – 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:

Amentum Wins $282.5M Contract from USCIS

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has awarded a $282.5 million contract to Amentum to provide biometric technology for use in its Application Support Centers (ASCs), of which there are 130 across the US and US territories. Amentum’s announcement of the contract didn’t go into details about which specific biometric technologies are involved in the contract, but the President of the company’s Engineering, Science, and Technology Group, Jill Bruning, said the tech will “modernize the process and improve the experience of people who are seeking to lawfully immigrate to our country.” Based in Virginia, Amentum offers a range of a technical and engineering services, mainly to the federal government.

Clear Comes to Pittsburgh

Clear has brought its expedited passenger screening program to the Pittsburgh International Airport, bringing the total number of airports in its network to 56. Clear’s system currently uses fingerprint or iris scans to immediately verify the identities of registered travelers, and thereby speed up the passenger screening process through a dedicated lane. But an overhaul is being planned for next year, when Clear will roll out a face-scanning program called “NextGen Identity+”. Clear brought its screening program to Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport earlier this month.

Luxand Launches Improved Facial Recognition SDK

Virginia-based Luxand has launched a new version of its facial recognition software development kit. FaceSDK 8.1 includes a Web Assembly build with samples; a React Native wrapper with samples for Android and iOS; a Flutter wrapper with samples for Android and iOS; and a .NET Standard 2.0 wrapper. The biometric SDK is meant to help developers make facial recognition tools for the web or mobile platforms, supporting apps ranging from security to entertainment.

New Samsung Sensors Offer Biometric Capabilities

Samsung has launched two new sensors with potential biometric applications. The ISOCELL Vizion 63D is a time-of-flight sensor for capturing high-resolution 3D images, while the ISOCELL Vizion 931 is a global shutter sensor for capturing “dynamic moments”, as Samsung put it in its announcement of the sensors. Samsung noted that the Vizion 63D is ideal for use in robots, XR devices, and “facial authentication” applications, while the Vizion 931 “is optimal for iris recognition, eye tracking as well as facial and gesture detection in head-mounted display devices like XR headsets.”

Age-gating Regulations Spur Another New Partnership

Texas-based BlueCheck and New Jersey’s Too Much Media have entered into a partnership focused on compliance with age-gating regulations. Too Much Media offers NATS (for “Next-generation Administration management & Tracking System”), a software package designed to support the back-end tasks of affiliate programs. The partnership will see BlueCheck’s age assurance technology integrated into the NATS platform. Initially, this age assurance technology will revolve around the use of name and address data, but BlueCheck says it will soon expand to include “mobile phone and facial age estimation technologies.” The companies say their aim is to “revolutionize the adult and content creator industries.”

New Biometric Cards Featuring IDEX, FPC, Thales Tech

Eastern Bank PLC (“EBL”), a bank based in Bangladesh, will launch a fingerprint-scanning, metal payment card based in IDEX Biometrics’ IDEX Pay platform in early 2024, the latter has announced. IDEX expects this to represent the world’s first commercially available metal biometric payment card. And the company has previously indicated that metal cards are expected to represent a major business opportunity. In its Q3 update last month, IDEX said it was seeing strong initial demand from the “premium” market segment of which metal cards are a part.

Fingerprint Cards’ T2 fingerprint sensor is being used in the new, fourth-generation version of Thales’ biometric payment card, the company has announced. The news comes after FPC revealed in October that its T2 sensor was similarly being used in Thales SafeNet IDPrime FIDO Bio Smart Card. FPC says the new card is ready for mass deployment on a global scale, and that it comes with enhanced security features, including encryption for the storage and communication of biometric data.

Trust Stamp Teams With Partisia

Trust Stamp has teamed up with Partisia, a specialist in commercial-grade infrastructure for privacy-preserving Secure Multiparty Computation (MPC) software solutions. The partnership is essentially aimed at ensuring the integrity of personal data, and will combine Trust Stamp’s IT2 identity token with Partisia’s GlobalSecure platform, which is designed to ensure that data processing adheres to regional regulations such as Europe’s GDPR, and to eliminate the need to transfer data to third parties. Trust Stamp’s IT2 solution is designed to irreversibly turn biometric data into an ‘identity token’, ensuring that it can’t be reverse-engineered and thereby protecting the privacy of the subject.

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December 19, 2023 – by Alex Perala