Biometrics
In OneZero. More on Medium.
General Intelligence
States still haven’t matched Illinois’ 2008 biometric privacy law
Though most Americans have likely never heard of it, Illinois’ 12-year-old Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) has proven itself to be the country’s strongest legal barrier against the unfettered collection of fingerprint, iris, voice, and facial recognition data.
Other states have taken notice. California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) included biometric data in its broad set of privacy protections when it went into effect in 2020, and just last week Virginia passed its own data privacy act, which experts say is largely modeled on California’s. …
Cameras gathered information on attendees’ gender, age, and whether they matched a list of suspicious persons
On New Year’s Day 2020, more than 90,000 college football fans piled into the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California, to watch the Oregon Ducks play the Wisconsin Badgers.
It turns out some of those fans were being watched, too. Before they even entered the stadium, thousands of attendees were being captured by a facial recognition system in the Rose Bowl’s FanFest activity area by an ad tech company called VSBLTY.
Four cameras hidden underneath digital signs captured data on attendees, generating 30,000 points of data on how long they looked at advertisements, their gender and age, and an analysis…
Our heartbeats differ just enough to tell us apart, but they also give away potentially sensitive information
Heartbeats, like our fingerprints and faces, are unique. The distinctive waveforms generated by a heart’s expansions and contractions differ just enough from person to person that they can be used to tell us apart. That means heartbeats could serve as a biometric — a unique physiological characteristic that can be used to identify a person. Some scientists think a heartbeat could be a better identifier than the fingerprints we use to unlock phones today.
Startups today make unobtrusive heart monitors that can detect drowsiness behind the wheel of a car or offer perpetual user authentication in high-security manufacturing facilities. …
Facial recognition companies are pitching the technology as a sanitary alternative to fingerprint scanners
The Covid-19 crisis enveloping millions of people around the world is also presenting an unlikely business opportunity for one sector of tech: facial recognition technology. Companies including DERMALOG in Germany and Telpo in China are pitching the technology as a method for identifying individuals without the risk of close contact.
Fingerprint scanners, for instance, require that many people touch the same surface, which could potentially spread infection if someone with Covid-19 were to use an unclean scanner. …
The technology uses supercapacitors and will help speed the creation of contacts lenses that monitor the body
When smart contact lenses — wearable, functional electronics for your eyes — finally arrive, they could provide a revolutionary platform for biometric tracking, drug delivery, augmented reality, and military-grade night vision. But a major reason you can’t get these at your local Lenscrafters is because they require power to run, which may result in them becoming too hot. Anyone whose thighs have been seared by an overheated laptop would, understandably, think twice before sticking a potentially scorching disc of plastic, smart or not, onto their pupil.
However, a new collaboration between South Korean teams, led by Jang-Ung Park at Yonsei…
