Biometric War Crimes: 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:

Russo-Ukrainian War

Russian forces collected the fingerprint and face biometrics of Ukrainian civilians during a “filtration” process in which civilians were compelled to flee from the besieged city of Mariupol and into Russian-controlled territory, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Civilians were also subject to body searches and were questioned about their political views. HRW characterizes the forcible transfer of civilians as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Pakistan Floods

The head of Pakistan’s Ehsaas social subsidy program has determined that biometric registration will be required for access to flood relief funds, framing it as a transparency measure. About a third of the country has been inundated by flooding resulting from unprecedented monsoon rains, attributed in part to the effects of climate change.

Voter Biometrics

Election authorities in Liberia are planning to transition the country to a biometric voter identification system for the 2023 presidential and legislative elections. National Elections Commission officials plan to begin collecting voters’ fingerprint and face biometrics using tablet devices starting in mid-December, and hope to complete the registration exercise in mid-March of 2023. NEC Chairperson Davidetta Browne-Lansanah noted that biometric voter registration would prevent duplicate registrations and voter impersonation.

Partnerships

A partnership with South Africa’s Barizma Solutions will see TECH5’s technology used to support law enforcement activities in the country. Barizma will integrate TECH5’s contactless face and fingerprint scanning technologies into its Mobile Sheriff and INTELLI-ID platforms. Mobile Sheriff, Barizma’s flagship solution, is aimed at helping traffic officers to identity vehicles and motorists, while INTELLI-ID is designed to match subjects against the Home Affairs National Identity System database for identity verification.

ABNB Federal Credit Union is now using behavioral biometrics to guard against fraud in its online and mobile banking channels. BioCatch is the provider of the biometric tech, through its partnership with Alkami Technology, of which ABNB is a client. ABNB CIO Mick Vollmer explained that the move was a response to increased fraud attempts that the financial services provider has seen over the past two years.

Executive Appointments

Token, the developer of a ring wearable that features an embedded fingerprint sensor, has appointed Rommel De La Cruz as its new Chief Financial Officer. De La Cruz comes to the company from a previous position as VP of Finance & Strategy for project44, a supply chain analytics startup. Before his brief term there, he worked for OneSpan, where he served as Senior Director of Global Finance from 2017 to 2019, and then as Vice President of Finance from 2019 to January of 2022.

Biometric Access

Oosto has revealed that its facial recognition technology is being used to enable contactless access control at Raphael Hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel. The private hospital is using Oosto’s OnAccess system to regulate access to its operating theater, in part as an effort to reduce contact-based touchpoints that can serve to spread disease. “We wanted to proactively remove the physical barriers that get in the way of caring for our patients as efficiently as possible while offering another layer of protection in the process,” explained the hospital’s Operations Room Manager, Raphael Cohen. “Oosto’s OnAccess allows us to do both.”

BIPA Cases

Kohl’s has become the latest major retailer to face a class action lawsuit under Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The lawsuit alleges that Kohl’s collects customers’ biometric data through its “advanced video surveillance systems,” and that it has not acquired customers’ explicit consent to do so, as per the requirements of BIPA.

Biometric Wearables

Masimo, a medical technology company, has announced a new smartwatch with sensors for the continuous monitoring of biometric data. The Masimo W1 is capable of tracking pulse and heart rate variability, as well as oxygen saturation and respiration. A limited edition of the smartwatch will be able to track hydration levels.

AW S***

Symantec’s Threat Hunter Team has found almost 2,000 mobile apps that contain hard-coded Amazon Web Services credentials. The security researchers say that these apps would be easy to extract and exploit, and would enable threat actors to gain access to troves of sensitive data in Amazon-hosted servers, including hundreds of thousands of biometric credentials. Ninety-eight percent of the 1,859 apps discovered with the vulnerability were iOS apps.

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September 1, 2022 – by Alex Perala