Law enforcement authorities in Balochistan, a major province in Pakistan, are considering implementing biometric safeguards to protect their weapons, according to an article in the country’s Daily Times. The development comes in the wake of an inside job in which corrupt police sold their munitions illegally.
Police services around the world have long shown a clear interest in biometric technology, but it’s usually not deployed in applications aimed against themselves. Pakistan, however, like its neighbour India, struggles with graft; the latter’s federal government has become a global leader in biometrics deployment through its efforts to set up a digital citizenship registry, partly in an effort to fight corruption further down the chain.
For its part, Pakistan has recently shown interest in similar areas, exploring the possibility of electronic voting secured by biometric technology, for example. With respect to securing the police weapons, it isn’t yet clear exactly what form the biometric security will take, but it will very likely be some kind of access control mechanism.
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January 12, 2015 -by Alex Perala
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