10289 - Who am I? Ask my phone! Biometrics ahead - Deccan Chronicle

Who am I? Ask my phone! Biometrics ahead

DECCAN CHRONICLE. | ANAND PARTHASARATHY

Published

Jul 30, 2016, 11:39 am IST

Iris scans are now recognized as one of the most secure ways of authenticating a person's identity.

 Smartphones now sport finger and eye scanners to protect the owner—offering exciting possibilities for authentication systems.

When the Chinese TV and smart phone maker re-entered the India market last month, it chose as its first offering, a handset -- TCL 560 -- which offered a new way to unlock the device: Eye Verify. Pre-record a scan of iris -- and then 'look' into the selfie camera every time you want to open the phone... a fool proof way to prevent others from doing so.

Iris scans are now recognized as one of the most secure ways of authenticating a person's identity since no two persons have the identical iris. To ensure you get a good image, The 560 combines a 5 megapixel from camera with an 84 degree field of view, with a HD IPS display. In other ways, this is a fairly standard dual SIM 5.5 inch phone running the latest Android 6.0 OS -- but the onboard eye scanner, opens up the exciting possibility that the phone could be tweaked to become a personal tool for a variety of authentication applications -- banking, passport control and most usefully, Aadhaar.

With over 1 billion Aadhaar cards issued, covering 85% of India's population, this has emerged as the world's largest digital ID system -- but the infrastructure to do an Aadhaar based ID check is so woefully inadequate that card- holders are yet to reap the full benefits. If every Aadhaar card holder is able to perform self authentication with a phone, it will dramatically reduce dependence on common service centres.

In fact officials of the Unique Identification Authority of India, have initiated discussion with leading manufacturers to see how smartphones with iris and fingerprint scanners can be embedded with the software to perform Aadhaar authentication -- in effect making them personal and portable verification. stations. It could be a game-changer -- and a global innovation -- in much the same way that electronic voting machines were, in an earlier era. Samsung has already put a UIDAI- approved iris scanner on a tablet for India for corporate use. Now TCL is signposting the way to make such technology even more ubiquitous by putting it on a Rs 7,500 device, affordable by individuals.

-IndiaTechOnline

9558 - Iris Changes Complicate Biometric Scans - Web Vision

Iris Changes Complicate Biometric Scans

This is an interesting news article in Nature that describes alterations in the iris in individuals over time.  We’ve always been told that irises do not change as we age, but that simply did not make sense to a number of people I’ve spoken with in the past.  Certainly there were questions of trauma and other changes, but aging itself certainly could have induced changes in the iris.

Now as reported in Nature, a study in IEEE Conf. Comput. Vision Pattern Recog. shows direct evidence that a single enrollment is not acceptable for absolute proof of identity over time.  This is important as biometric identification through iris scans are starting to become more common.  I’ve had to submit to biometric iris scans for some consulting work and they are starting to be used for passport control entry into certain countries.

This paper also demonstrates yet again, that previous assumptions about the nature of our understanding can be problematic at best and outright dangerous at worst.  The retinal community saw this with retinal remodeling and now the biometric community is seeing it now as an early assumption led to the field laboring under the misunderstanding of static biology.  My odds are on more change and alteration in various aspects of biology from genetics to protein turnover and more. Biological systems are not static and should not be assumed to be static.

Image credit:  Bryan William Jones, Ph.D.

9557 - Ageing eyes hinder biometric scans - Nature.com

Ageing eyes hinder biometric scans

GEORGE STEINMETZ/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Iris recognition systems could become more prone to error as people's irises change with age.

Identifying people by scanning the irises of their eyes may not be as reliable as some governments and the public might think. That’s according to new research suggesting that irises, rather than being stable over a lifetime, are susceptible to ageing effects that steadily change their appearance over time.

With iris recognition now being used at border control in countries such as the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, this has huge implications, says Kevin Bowyer, a professor of computer science at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. At the very least, it could cause delays if people have to be scanned again. At worst, it implies that people might increasingly be able to evade detection when moving between countries.

Bowyer and his colleague Samuel Fenker, also at Notre Dame, used state-of-the-art, commercial iris-matching software to measure differences in the software's performance when comparing more than 20,000 different images of 644 irises, taken between 2008 and 2011. The authors compared the quality of a match between two images of the same iris that were recorded roughly a month apart, to pairs of images taken one, two or three years apart. They found that the rate at which the system failed to match two images of the same iris — known as the false non-match rate — increased by 153% over the three years.

Eyes down

All iris-recognition systems have some margin of error, because there will always be slight differences between the original iris image — taken to create a digital template when people first enrol in iris-recognition schemes, for example — and those taken later to confirm a person's identity. If irises did not age, the false non-match rate would be expected to remain constant over time, but Bowyer says his results clearly show that this is not the case. “One iris biometric marketing claim has been that the iris allowed ‘a single enrolment for a lifetime’. This claim is now proven to be false,” he says.

The likelihood of software incorrectly matching two irises from different people is around 1 in 2 million (known as the false match rate). So in practical terms, Bowyer’s results suggest that the false match rate for a system would increase to 2.5 in 2 million after three years had elapsed. This rate sounds low, but the effect appears to be cumulative, says Bowyer: “So although you might not really notice the problem after one year or two years, after five or ten years it can become a huge problem,” he explains.

But some are not convinced that the iris ageing effect will make a noticeable difference to the false match rate — even in huge national iris-identification schemes such as India's, which so far has more than 200 million people enrolled. Biometrics expert Vijayakumar Bhagavatula of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says: “In my opinion, the impact of this research is to suggest that iris templates should be periodically updated.”

But the work also points to the need to develop iris-recognition algorithms that are less affected by ageing, says Bowyer, who is due to present his research next month at a biometrics workshop at the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference in Providence, Rhode Island. “The development of ageing-resistant algorithms for iris biometrics has not been studied at all. In contrast, in the face-recognition research community, there is a lot of work on developing algorithms to match faces in the presence of significant ageing.”

It is not clear why irises were assumed to be somehow immune to the ravages of time. According to Bhagavatula, it is partly because of a lack of long-term data. But Bowyer’s view is that it comes down to an incorrect and optimistic assumption made at the outset of iris biometrics. “This assumption was repeated often enough, and in a convincing enough manner until it became fact,” he says.

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9300 - Now iris scan for 'Cattle UID' - TNN

Now iris scan for 'Cattle UID'

Bella Jaisinghani | TNN | Jan 29, 2016, 07.35 PM IS

MUMBAI: A company named Biomatiques Identification Solutions claims to have introduced the "retina recognition technology" for cattle identification in Tirupati Friday.

The e-governance conclave was organised by the government of Andhra Pradesh along the lines of the Digital India initiative of the Central government. This platform served as an exchange of ideas for IT secretaries from various states as well as leaders of industry. Some of the key themes were ePragati, Mee Seva, Bharat Net, Start-Ups for e-governance and ICT (Information & Communication Technology) for smart cities.

The firm issued a press release to say that in India, the concept of animal identification is not new. However, the methods that are used are either "outdated" or can be tampered easily. The iris identification system is reportedly more reliable. Biomatiques says that so far there are only 12 other companies in the international market which offer iris recognition as a method for biometric identification.

In the same way that Indian citizens' eyes are scanned for issuing Aadhaar cards, this firm has devised what it calls 'Cattle UID', a retina biometric technology for identifying cattle. With this every cattle can be given a unique ID which will qualify them for insurance which is helpful to dairy farmers, government and insurance companies.

TOI has reported how cattle rearers have been using yellow ear tags to identify their animals. Unscrupulous farmers tear off a piece of the animal's ear to make fraudulent insurance claims.

"RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) ear tags, ear marking, neck tagging with transponders, branding using hot iron or freezing methods, paint and tattoos are some of the methods used worldwide which pose serious health hazards to bovines worldwide.

Latest Comment

very nice..

Jagdish Balakrishnan

This does not occur in retina recognition. Just like iris recognition method for humans, retina identification is also a contact-less technology. Privacy is another challenge in some of the methods like RFID ear tags as third party scanners can be easily used for tracking your cattle,"" said Tamaal Roy, CEO, Biomatiques Identification Solutions.

This firm has supplied 33,310 iris scanning devices so far to Andhra Pradesh which will be used in various sectors like education, pension and ration distribution.

On the price front, the company claims it has managed to bring the cost at par with fingerprint technology.

8749 - National ID Month: 4 Biometric Countries - Find Biometrics

National ID Month: 4 Biometric Countries

Posted on September 24, 2015

National eID card programs are set to encompass half the world population in three years time, according to a report by Acuity Market Intelligence, and biometrics play a key role in said initiatives. September is National ID Month at FindBiometrics, in which we have been taking an in depth look at this proliferating global market that accounts for some of the largest biometric deployments in the world.

Of course, while the 2018 goalpost forecasted by Acuity requires the further spread of National ID programs, a great number of countries included in that figure already have undertaken biometric registration initiatives for their citizens. Here’s a look at four countries, their national ID programs, and how biometrics factor into them.

India

Perhaps the most ambitious national ID program in the world is the Aadhaar initiative undertaken by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The national registry contains biographic and biometric data on every enrolled citizen, and though participation is voluntary for most living in India, there are a great deal of benefits offered by Aadhaar including the nation’s generous universal healthcare scheme.

The biometrics used in Aadhaar are fingerprint, iris and face. Because of the sheer size of India, and due to the remote locations of some of its citizens who could most benefit from its perks, the enrollment process is taking advantage of a great deal of modern biometric technology. For instance: Green Bit’s STQC certified Dactyscan84c 10-prints Livescan technology, optimized for mass enrollment solutions.

Recently a biometric iris scanning facility was launched in Andra Pradesh for the Aadhaar-based distribution of pensions. Andra Pradesh will be using iris biometrics as a primary authentication method to issue Direct Benefit Transfer, and in order to do so it has employed the IriShield USB MK120U from IriTech – the first iris biometrics solution to be STQC certified for the Aadhaar national ID program.

Israel

Israel is currently in a pilot phase for its own incredibly ambitious biometric national ID card program. In June, the country’s national ID pilot phase was extended despite serious criticism regarding its effectiveness and ability to deliver actionable statistics.

Two hours after Interior Minister Silvan Shalom announced the nine month extension the program’s detractors released a report detailing the program’s shortcomings. In addition to not offering any metrics regarding the program’s efficacy in curbing identity fraud, the trial national ID program has also been criticized for embarrassing levels of defectiveness. Sixteen percent of the 91,000 ID cards being used at the Ben-Gurion Airport have been reported as faulty or inoperable and 430,000 biometric scans have been reported as defective.

Taking the report in stride, Shalom pointed to other countries in which national ID has been successfully implemented, citing the primary difficulty stemming from the Knesset State Control Committee simply needing more time to get acquainted with the program (hence the trial’s extension).

Afghanistan

Biometric national ID powered by Ideal Innovations, Inc. (I3) has been implemented in Afghanistan for international security reasons. The Afghanistan Ministry of the Interior, in a 2011 report from the FBI titled Mission Afghanistan, stated that it had planned to enroll 8 million citizens in its national ID program serving what one government official called “the betterment of the country.” Built to be compatible with the FBI’s own biometrics database, the primary goal of Afghanistan’s national ID project is to better understand the movements of the country’s population and uncover previously invisible terrorist threats.

Of course, additional benefits come along with biometric national ID, and in Afghanistan that is still true. Though the rollout of the biometric ID cards has been reported as hitting a few snags along the way, when it was first announced The Guardian pointed out that such a program could potentially address the nation’s history of rampant electoral corruption.

South Africa

Moving our focus to South Africa we find the enormous and successful national fingerprint database deployed by NEC Corporation. South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs began the Home Affairs National Identification System (HANIS) in order to do away with paper systems in 21st century fashion (digitally). A key aspect of HANIS is NEC’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), which is able to store 50 million records and conduct 1:n matching procedures, boasting 99.9% accuracy.

While the usual national ID benefits were observed after the implementation, a white paper from NEC describing the project asserts that HANIS has had an even greater effect on South Africa. It is no secret that the nation’s diverse population of 48 million has been divided by language, race and culture on many occasions, but with the national ID program no matter what color or creed a person living in the country may be, they can all share one thing in common: they are definitively South African.

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Be sure to register for our National ID Month webinar, Biometrics, National ID and the Future of Global Identity. Stay posted to FindBiometrics throughout September as we continue this conversation with National ID Month. Take part in the discussion by following us on Twitter and tweeting with the hashtag #FBNational.

National ID Month is made possible by our sponsors  NEC Corporation of America and Green Bit Biometric Systems.

7713 - Iris Scanning to Help Pensioners in Indian City - Find Biometrics

Iris Scanning to Help Pensioners in Indian City

Posted on March 31, 2015

Pensioners in the Indian city of Vijayawada who don’t have bank accounts will soon receive their pension payments at their doorsteps, according to a New Indian Express article. The only catch is that those pensioners will need to have their irises scanned for identity authentication purposes.

The announcement came from a press conference hosted by the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation, where VMC commissioner G. Veerapandian revealed that the project would be completed by the end of April, serving 5088 pensioners who lack bank accounts through which the pension funds would normally distributed automatically. Once the pensioners are authenticated via iris scan, the VMC will open savings accounts for them and provide them with smart cards that will allow them to withdraw pension funds and perform other transactions.

The new system, first announced at the end of January, will replace the previous thumbprint identification system, which the VMC says was unreliable. It appears to also be part of a general project on the part of the Indian government to push the country forward digitally. To that end, the federal government has been building a biometric registry of all citizens with its Aadhaar ID program, and is using that system to administer subsidies and services – a major help to those many citizens for whom access to government services had previously been difficult.

—

March 31, 2015 – by Alex Perala

7292 - Indian State Adopts Iris Scanning for Pension Payments -findbiometrics

Indian State Adopts Iris Scanning for Pension Payments

Posted on January 30, 2015

An iris recognition system is going to be used to identify pensioners for their payments in Andhra Pradesh, according to an NDTV article. This new system will replace the thumbprint identification system currently in place in the Indian Krishna district.

It’s part of an effort to cut down on fraud, according to one official. In that sense it echoes the wider biometric effort underway nationally via the Aadhaar program, which has sought to create a biometric registry of citizens, partly so that the government can cut down on fraud in the administration of its services and subsidies.

One of the most remarkable aspects of that program is its ambition to reach all Indian citizens, and a similar claim can be made of the iris system in Andhra Pradesh, given that even in its trial phase it will be implemented at the village level. Once again India is proving to be a pioneering country in the implementation of biometric technology.

—

January 30, 2015 – by Alex Perala

7216 - Centre to implement biometric attendance system soon - Economic Times

Centre to implement biometric attendance system soon

By Muntazir Abbas, ET Bureau | 15 Jan, 2015, 12.09PM IST

To avoid any glitch, the government is also installing a small fraction of iris-based scanners. Each such device would cost around Rs 3,500. 

NEW DELHI: The Centre is set to implement Aadhaar-based biometric system for attendance in all government departments and state-owned entities spread across Delhi, a top official said. 

Department of electronics & information technology (DeitY) has so far implemented Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) in 54 government locations in Delhi that requires fingerprint-based attendance for employees entering into the office premise. Each device takes 2 seconds to establish biometrics identity and gives real-time access. 

"We are rolling out biometrics attendance system in 394 government organizations and agencies within the Delhi region while 300 of them have actually started working on implementing it," DeitY joint secretary Ajay Kumar told ET. 

Kumar said that DeitY will initially deploy the system in Central government offices within Delhi while the other locations across states would be covered at a later stage, with state governments showning interest in the biometrics attendance system. 

"It's difficult to give a timeline, but the onus is on various government departments. We had earlier planned to implement this system in Delhi by Jan 26, 2015, but the project is likely to take some more time," Kumar said.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is setting up kiosks in government departments and offices to enroll those who don't have the Aadhaar enrolment number which is necessary for the biometrics attendance system.

7182 - Aadhaar Architect foresees Iris scanners on smart phones - Planet Biometrics

Aadhaar Architect foresees Iris scanners on smart phones

Former Unique Identification Authority of India chief Nandan Nilekani has said budget smartphones using iris scanners could become an important authentication tool for the biometric Aadhar unique id project he masterminded.

“As biometric sensors get popular and cheaper, the next generation of smart phones will have iris cameras built into them. In a year or two, we will have sub-$100 smart phones with an iris camera that does authentication of the Aadhaar number,” he said at the 24th international conference on VLSI design in Bengaluru.

Nilekani, who was last year awarded the Economist magazine’s 2014 Social and Economic Innovation Award for his leadership of the vast national identity scheme, said that iris biometrics could also improve the security of mobile payments.

"One of the big challenges in the financial sector is, how do we combine accuracy with security? In other parts of the world, when you do a financial transaction, you do a one-factor authentication. In India, we have something called two-factor authentication. Those things make life more complicated."

“If you have mobile phones with biometric, with a single click you will see consumer payments that will take us to a cashless economy”.

The UIDAI has been given the task of generating 1.2 billion unique identification numbers for every Indian by March, with so-called Aadhaar numbers hoped to integrate citizens into government welfare schemes and reduce paperwork and corruption.

7172 - Iris-recognition camera to be available for one-click two factor authentication: Nilekani - Domain B

Iris-recognition camera to be available for one-click two factor authentication: Nilekani

news 

06 January 2015

Former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani said a sub $100 smartphone with an iris-recognition camera would be available in a year or two and that would allow users one-click two factor authentication - the mobile number would be one factor with the iris-based biometric authentication of Aadhaar number the second, The Times of India reported today.

"One of the big challenges in the financial sector is how to combine accuracy with security. The world over, when you do a financial transaction, you do a one factor authentication, but In India, we have a two factor authentication. It's complicated, as you have to enter something and get an OTP (one time password)," Nilekani said at the 28th International Conference on VLSI Design in Bengaluru yesterday.

Taxi hailing app Uber came under the RBI scanner recently for not using two-factor authentication, which forced the company to switch to a mobile wallet, a less convenient form since customers need to keep refilling these wallets.

"As sensors get popular and cheaper, the next generation of smartphones will have iris cameras built into them," Nilekani said.

The VLSI conference discussed in much detail the emerging internet-of-things (IoT) ecosystem. The VLSI or very-large-scale integration allows for building an integrated circuit comprising thousands of transistors can onto a single chip.

According to Nilekani, innovations in information and communication technologies (ICT) had led to emergence of many devices like smart phones or tablets that could do  fingerprint authentication using biometric sensors.

He added, by following the hour glass architecture, the UIDAI was able to build a set of financial applications to enable citizens avail the direct benefit transfer schemes into their bank accounts.

''The concept of hour glass architecture is important for scaling innovation on the application side and the technology (sensor) side, as evident from the Aadhaar project, in which we had the task of getting 1.2-billion people have a unique identification at a pace, which was sustainable and scalable,'' he said.

With Nilekani as chairman, the UIDAI had been able to provide Aadhaar number to about 730 million people till date, as its platform had been built to generate one million unique identification numbers a day for diverse applications such as cash transfers, online authentication and withdrawal of money, among others.

An Aadhaar-based attendance system for marking the presence of employees had also been implemented by the central government in its offices across the country

- See more at: http://www.domain-b.com/industry/telecom/20150106_nandan_nilekani.html#sthash.Byd1K2h4.dpuf

4409 - Aadhaar may soon try 'authentic' iris - dna India

Aadhaar may soon try 'authentic' iris

Wednesday, Jul 3, 2013, 6:00 IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA

Dhaval Kulkarni  

  

Officials said iris-based authentication was more accurate than the fingerprint-based one which is being used presently.

Taking its biometric authentication system to the next level, the state government will soon begin experimenting with iris-based biometric authentication. It is also planning an Aadhaar-based pilot project using the system.

Officials said iris-based authentication was more accurate than the fingerprint-based one which is being used presently.

A senior information technology (IT) department official said they were planning to purchase around two to three iris-based authentication machines.

“We are planning a pilot project to test out the software,” he added. “We have written to agencies empanelled by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification Directorate certified iris machines,” said an official, adding that they were planning to undertake an Aadhaar-linked pilot project in any of the 12 financial inclusion districts in Maharashtra, including Mumbai and Pune.

3397 - Army’s Fingerprint and Iris Databases Head for the Cloud - Wired.com

Army’s Fingerprint and Iris Databases Head for the Cloud

BY SPENCER ACKERMAN05.30.139:30 A,
Follow @attackerman

A soldier scans an Afghan’s eye for placement in the U.S. military’s large wartime biometrics databases, March 2012. Photo: U.S. Army

The next time U.S. soldiers snap a picture of your eye or scan your face, they’re likely to store all that personal, physical data in the cloud.

The Army’s Intelligence command recently awarded a sole-source contract to bring the classified Defense Cross-Domain Analytical Capability, a database storing various kinds of security-relevant information the Army collects, onto the proverbial “cloud” of distributed servers and networks. Among the focuses of the project: “integrating Biometrics into the cloud,” according to a description of the contract.

The effort “involves the Entity management and tracking system for Biometrics/Human Terrain Facial recognition capability (photos, video) and edge-to-Cloud Enterprise Messaging (Corps/Division Node to/from Handheld,” says the Army Intelligence and Security Command. “Human Terrain” refers to an Army program in Iraq and Afghanistan that sought to map unfamiliar tribal networks and other social structures. Integrating that into an intelligence database is a major shift, but more on that in a second.

Currently, at least some biometric data is stored locally in the warzone of Afghanistan, in or around where soldiers and marines on patrol take it from locals and insurgents. That limits troops’ ability to exploit it, particularly when they’re mobile: troops who detain a suspicious person in, say, Djibouti won’t necessarily know if he’s already been nabbed in Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere. And supporting mobile operations is key to the whole cloud-storage project. “Mobile support in Cloud Corps Nodes includes provisioning the handhelds as data receivers and summarization of query results for handheld,” the Army command envisions.

But there are drawbacks to migrating the biometric data to the cloud. Among them, familiar to anyone who tries to get at their important GoogleDoc over an overtaxed wi-fi connection at Starbucks, is bandwidth. If it’s bad for you there, it’s much worse for soldiers in the middle of a warzone. “It’s an excellent opportunity when operating in environments like the NYPD can with their mobile biometric devices in all of 3G’s glory,” says a biometrics specialist who worked with the U.S. government in Afghanistan, “but Tora Bora is another story. (Then there’s the expense of supporting and accessing the cloud-based database in a rugged warzone, the specialist adds: “Personally, I think bandwidth is going to cost more than humans.”)

Still, the military is into biometrics in a big way. It’s created and maintained biometrics databases containing literally millions of iris and fingerprint scans from Iraqis and Afghans. The Iraq database has outlasted the Iraq war: it resides permanently at U.S. Central Command in Tampa.

Evidently unsatisfied with the clunky ViewFinder-esque mobile tools for collecting biometric data in the field, in February the Pentagon inked a $3 million research deal with California’s AOptix to check out its smartphone-based biometric identifier, built on an iPhone and iOS. Then there’s all the Pentagon’s additional research into identifying people by the unique pungencies of their body odor and the ways they walk.

It’s worth noting that the architects of the Army’s star-crossed “human terrain” mapping, a much-criticized attempt at warzone anthropology, swore up and down that their interviews with tribal leaders had nothing to do with gathering intelligence. That distinction had much to do with the distaste many anthropologists had with working alongside the military, but architects Montgomery McFate and Steve Fondacaro said they weren’t spying because they weren’t part of the military’s “targeting cycle.”

“[G]iven the vast collection and reporting effort that supports lethal targeting, using HTS [the Human Terrain System] to fulfill this function would be redundant and duplicative,” they wrote in 2012. (.PDF) “Whereas [human intelligence] requires highly specific information about individuals in order to capture or kill, social science, as practiced in HTS, seeks broad contextual information for nonlethal purposes.”

Whatever McFate and Fondacaro’s intentions, folding biometric data from the Human Terrain System into an intelligence database collapses their distinction. Once that information enters the database, nothing stops analysts from marshaling it for potentially lethal military operations. That will have implications if the Army ever again tries to get into the social science business.

The obvious worry for any effort like this, aside from bandwidth, is going to be data security. Military cloud storage is still in its infancy — in 2009, the colonel in charge of the Defense Cross-domain Analytical Capability cautioned, “To a certain degree it’s cloud technology, but we are applying something that’s less bleeding-edge” — and many in uniform fear that they can’t adequately secure a cloud-based infrastructure. It’s a real concern in an age when Chinese cyber-espionage of U.S. military secrets runs deep. The unique physical characteristics of millions of people isn’t something you want to leave vulnerable.

Still, if the military can figure out how to lock down its cloud, the Army looks likely to start storing some of its most sensitive and difficult-to-replicate physical data onto it. The 12-month project kicks off in late August — giving the Army plenty of time to collect more facial, eye and fingerprint information before upload.

Noah Shachtman contributed reporting.

2913 - Iris scan to add layer to Aadhaar authentication

Iris scan to add layer to Aadhaar authentication

System to be introduced in first quarter of 2013

Devjyot Ghoshal / New Delhi Jan 03, 2013, 00:27 IST

One of the biggest purported flaws of the Unique Identification Authority of India ( UIDAI)’s Aadhaar programme was the risk of deterioration of beneficiaries’ fingerprint quality, especially given the country’s large farm worker population, among the main target groups.

But, almost in sync with the government’s plan of rolling out the ambitious direct benefits transfer (DBT) scheme nationwide, starting with 20 districts from January 1, the UIDAI is finishing work on introducing iris-based authentication in the first quarter of 2013, said a senior UIDAI official.

The iris, a circular structure in the eye, is responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupils. The colours, textures and patterns of each individual’s irises are thought to be unique.

This type of authentication would allow UIDAI to not only use iris scans of residents taken during Aadhaar enrolment for de-duplication (eliminating duplicates), it could also utilise these, along with fingerprint scans, to reduce the overall rate of authentication failures.

“There are some huge advantages with iris,” the official said. “(For example) a labourer’s fingerprints may get worn out, but his iris won’t. Iris patterns are much more solid and give a lot more information.”

Although the UIDAI came for criticism in 2011, particularly from the home ministry, for the cost of scanning the irises of every resident who enrolled for Aadhaar, the official explained this was a requirement because it would be difficult to ensure accuracy in de-duplication in excess of 99 per cent on the basis of just one biometric measure.

“One fingerprint will give me limited information. Five fingerprints will mean more information and less chances of error. Similarly, if I have the iris (data) also, there is a wider set of information about a person and, therefore, the points of distinctness become much larger. And, the probability that both the iris and the finger will match is exceedingly small,” the official said.

Despite its utility, iris-based authentication was previously unfeasible, primarily due to the cost of scanners. “But now, we have seen very low-cost devices, some as low as those used for fingerprint authentication,” the official said, adding a clutch of both domestic and international vendors, including Koreans, were being roped in for a proof of concept (PoC), subsequent to which vendors would be empanelled.

“There are no standards in iris authentication available, as of now,” the official said. “We will be the first ones in the world who will have iris image and transmission standards, matching algorithms and compression (standards) well-defined.”

However, in a PoC conducted last year in Karnataka’s Mysore district, the failed authentication rate stood at only 0.79 per cent for single-eye cameras and 0.60 per cent for dual-eye cameras, for about 5,000 residents. “The results clearly demonstrate iris authentication to be viable in the Indian context,” the PoC report said.

But the real test for the technology would come if and when it is implemented nationwide from early this year, as DBT expands in its reach and scope.

1711 - Iris scanner could tell your race and gender - New Scientist

18th October 2011 by Laxmi Sandhana

IRIS images may soon be able to do more than just verify your identity - they may confirm your race and gender too.

The iris controls the size of the pupil and gives a person's eyes their colour. It grows into a complex and unique pattern as a fetus develops and remains the same throughout a person's life. This fact has been successfully exploited in iris-based biometric systems, which work on the principle that each iris is completely different to any other.

\

A man, definitely 

(Image: Ian Waldie/Getty Images News)

But that is not strictly true, as Kevin Bowyer at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana and his colleagues have found. They have developed a system that can pick out similarities between irises, instead of differences. Initial tests show it can distinguish between people of two different racial backgrounds and shows promise in determining gender.

"You might assume that there is no similarity in iris texture," says Bowyer, "but you would be wrong."

In a typical iris scan, a camera snaps an image of a person's eye while it is bathed in near-infrared light. Software identifies the iris portion of the eye, and then analyses 1024 sample regions, looking for patterns in the way the delicate filaments of tissue, known as the stroma, reflect light. This unique information is then used to generate a code of binary numbers.

Bowyer's team's method adds a layer of complexity. For each of the sample regions, their software identifies features such as lines or spots in the stroma, and saves that information. It also records how brightness varies across each region.

This richer set of attributes allowed the researchers to train an algorithm to look for common features among irises of known ethnicity and gender. When they turned the system on a database of unknown irises of 1200 people, it predicted whether a person was Chinese or Caucasian with over 90 per cent accuracy, and correctly identified gender 62 per cent of the time. The team will present the research next month at the IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The reason for the low success rate in predicting gender, Bowyer says, is because the team have not yet fully worked out which textural features of the iris correspond to gender. He says that the fact that the results are better than chance means it should be possible to improve the system's ability to determine gender. The team has also not yet tested the system on people with other or more complex ethnic backgrounds.

Aside from making it difficult for people to fabricate a false identity in which they have a different gender or race, the method could speed up searches within large iris databases by reducing the data subset to be searched. It would also be possible to count the number of people belonging to different ethnic backgrounds coming into a country without recording their identity.

"It is interesting work that does fly a bit in the face of conventional thinking," says Vijayakumar Bhagavatula of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Iris patterns are generally considered to be highly random; even a person's left and right iris are different. Still, he says, "in the absence of an established biological connection between iris pattern and gender or ethnicity, there is no way to know if the features being used by Bowyer are the 'best' ones to use. There may be other features that give better prediction rates."

The iris code
Today, most commercial iris-recognition systems use an algorithm developed by John Daugman of the University of Cambridge and patented worldwide in 1992.

Daugman's insight lay in computerising a process to mathematically analyse the random patterns visible within the iris image to create a binary code called an iris code. This code is so individual to a person - even identical twins have different iris codes - that only 70 per cent of it needs to match for an iris comparison to be considered successful. The chance of a greater than 70 per cent match between two irises is less than 1 in 10 billion.