Mobile biometric technology is more than just unlocking your smartphone with your fingerprint, face, or iris. Many of the same innovations that have made biometrics flexible and affordable enough to integrate into consumer-facing hardware have also allowed for strong biometric identity to become a more prominent aspect of vertical markets on a global scale. This week,…
Last week at FindBiometrics we continued to unpack our Year in Review 2016 results—looking at the most interesting modalities and the impending death of the password—while biometric elections, innovations in mobility, and advanced security made up the bulk of the headlines. Here is a look back on last week’s top stories in global identity management:…
The Sierra Leone government has received a large shipment of biometric registration kits. The shipment arrived on Thursday of this week, with Minister of Internal Affairs Alfred Palo Conteh asserting that it “will send a clear and strong message to the general public that the 2018 general elections will surely take place” – a poignant…
Zimbabwe isn’t going to use biometrics in the country’s 2018 election general election, but is proceeding with a biometric voter registration program, reports The Herald. The clarification comes by way of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, whose chair, Justice Rita Makarau, told The Herald that the biometric registration “is going to assist us to compile a…
Authorities in Kenya are gearing up for a major biometric election. The country’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has launched a month-long effort to get as many eligible voters enrolled as possible ahead of the General Election scheduled for August 8th, with incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition coalition leader Raila Odinga looking to…
Ghana has just held its third major election to feature biometric voter verification care of GenKey technology, and it’s highlighting the benefits and perils of the emerging age of digital polling. The country became the first in the world to use biometric technology to verify voters in 2012, when the technology was used in a…
Smartmatic has unveiled a new online voting system based on biometric authentication. Called TIVI, the system essentially verifies voters via selfie, allowing them to cast their ballots online from the comfort of their own homes. A voter needs only to upload an image of her face to the system prior to voting, and then facial…
Smartmatic has announced the winners of its Transparency 2016 Election Photo Contest. Organized in partnership with the Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation, the contest highlighted the civil spirit animating the Philippines’ recent general elections, with Jijo de Guzman’s grand prize-winning photo depicting a Catholic nun voting alongside a woman in traditional Muslim garb. De Guzman won…
“Much of the biometric data was collected during an intensive campaign last year ahead of its national election…” Election authorities in the Philippines are taking advantage of the country’s new biometric voter registration system to ensure that upcoming polling is fair and free of fraud. Ahead of the Philippines’ district and youth council elections, the…
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is going ahead with a plan for biometric voter registration for the country’s 2018 elections. The ZEC first announced it was considering the idea near the start of this year, with a spokesperson pointing to examples of biometric polling in Kenya and Ghana. Now, it has secured $50 million in finding…
The head of the Philippines’ Commission on Elections says there will be no extension of the voter registration period ahead of the October 31st district and youth council elections, reports GMA News Online. Comelec chairman Andres Bautista explained that an extension of the registration period would interfere with the organization’s election preparations, adding, “We still…
The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) is forging ahead with its biometric polling efforts with a new round of elections underway. These are the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections—referring essentially to small districts and youth councils, respectively. As Sun.Star Baguio reports, the elections are scheduled for October 31st with voter registration having opened last week.…
CENI, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s election commission, has chosen Gemalto to provide the biometric enrollment technology for its next election. The deal will see Gemalto provide 22,000 mobile voter enrollment kits, with Gemalto’s Coesys Mobile Enrollment stations being deployed at 18,000 enrollment centers across the country. In an effort to update the country’s national register…
Although electronic voting is still seen by some as a thing of the future, there are experts in the field with decade’s worth of experience under their belt. This is the case of Robert Cook, Global Administration Sales Operations VP for Smartmatic. For the last 38 years, Mr. Cook has been involved in the adoption…
Two national agencies are vying for control over Liberia’s biometric ID project ahead of the country’s 2017 election, reports FrontPageAfrica. The National Identification Registry (NIR) was originally established to issue biometric ID cards, but the National Elections Commission (NEC) is now attempting to take over the biometric registration process on its own. It’s a critical issue…
The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) is insisting that voters’ biometric data was not breached in recent hack attacks against its website. The attacks occurred toward the end of last month, with Comelec’s website first being defaced by Anonymous Philippines, followed by the posting of voter data by a group called Lulzsec Pilipinas. That data…
Hack attacks against the Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) website are stoking fears about user data breaches. The attacks happened toward the end of last month. On March 27th, Anonymous Philippines’ defaced the website, reportedly to raise the alarm over user data security; only hours after that incident, a group called Lulzsec Pilipinas posted what…
Smartmatic says a new survey conducted by the company clearly indicates an appetite for change to America’s voting system. The survey asked 1,000 registered voters about their attitudes toward voting and potential upgrades to voting systems, and found that 81 percent felt that changes should be made. Asked to select the priority from three potential…
Last week at FindBiometrics we continued to explore Healthcare Month while FinTech, government applications and multimodal innovation made up the bulk of the biometrics industry news. Here’s a look back on the top digital identity stories from week that was: Healthcare Month Continues It was week two of Healthcare Month 2016, and as we continued…
Uganda’s Electoral Commission has started training staff to use the biometric technology to be used in its upcoming election. The EC ordered 32,000 thumbprint scanners for this purpose from Smartmatic, which has also helped to provide technology for election projects in other countries including Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, and the Philippines. The scanners will be deployed…
Last week at FindBiometrics we brought our 13th annual Year in Review to a close while border control and national ID made big headlines in the industry news. We published an interview with NEXT Biometrics CEO Tore Etholm-Idsøe and also brought you stories on fingerprints, facial recognition and physical access control. Here is a look…
The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) has announced a new partnership with Facebook that could help generate excitement about the country’s May 9th election. Speaking about the new partnership to the media, Comelec chairman Andres Bautista and Facebook Public Policy for Asia Pacific head Elizabeth Hernandez framed it as a means to facilitate dialogue among citizens,…
Gambia’s Independent Electoral Commission is busily working to prepare the country’s biometric voter registration system. Appearing before the country’s Public Accounts Committee and Public Enterprise Committee (PAC/PEC), IEC Chairman Alhaji Mustapha Carayol was asked why he came to the meeting without his senior officials, to which he replied that they are in the field working…
Uganda’s Electoral Commission has announced that biometric voter authentication will be used in next month’s national elections. The EC has ordered 32,000 thumbprint scanners and will deploy them at 28,010 polling stations for the election. They are programmed to automatically activate at 8:00am on polling day and to shut down at 5:00pm, adding an extra…
Last year was a big one for mobile biometrics. As we observed in previous entries in our 2015 Biometrics Year in Review, most of our survey respondents strongly agree that major tech companies like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and Google have played a major role in bringing biometrics into everyday life. Much of that biometric championing…
Last week at FindBiometrics border control and national ID made the headlines while we continued to unpack our 13th annual Biometrics Year in Review. Fingerprints and mobility took up a great portion of the headlines and we took a look at some of the first market research reports of 2016. Here is a review of the top…
With its newly-won Supreme Court backing, the Philippines’ Commission on Elections is proceeding with its deregistration of voters who failed to submit their biometric data in anticipation of this year’s national elections. Comelec has now deregistered 300,000 voters in the Eastern Visayas region, an area that had appeared to be problematic in terms of biometric…
Daon is helping to develop a biometric voting system in Somaliland, the company has announced. It’s a project organized by Interpeace, a United Nations-affiliated NGO that works to build peace in war-torn states. Daon has been selected to provide the key software technology to ATEA, an IT company that Interpeace has contracted for the project.…
Preparing for a biometric election next year, the Electoral Commission of Ghana is making room for a margin of error. The EC has decided that traditional, manual voter verification will play a role in the election process. Biometrics will still play the primary role in voter verification. In a meeting of an Inter-Party Advisory Committee,…
The Philippines’ Supreme Court has sided with the country’s Commission on Elections (“Comelec”) in the tense court battle over biometric voter authentication. The court has dismissed the protestations of the Kabataan-Party list and its allies and revoked its temporary restraining order against Comelec’s efforts to de-register the eligible voters who did not submit their biometric…
Egypt has just concluded its latest parliamentary elections, and Morpho (Safran) played a major role in the process. The company’s MorphoTablets were used to register voters and verify their identification cards. MorphoTablets are equipped with biometric capabilities allowing for large-scale authentication via facial and fingerprint recognition. The devices also feature Bluetooth, cellular, and Wi-Fi connectivity, and…
The battle over biometric polling continues to play out in the Philippines’ Supreme Court as civil organizations led by the Kabataan Party-list argue vehemently against the Commission on Elections’s (Comelec) “no bio, no boto” policy. The complainants have filed a new petition urging the Supreme Court to uphold its temporary restraining order (TRO) on Comelec’s move…
Electronic elections specialist Smartmatic has overseen another successful election in Venezuela. The company has provided voting technology for Venezuela’s last 14 national elections, and its end-to-end system proved a resounding success in this latest parliamentary voting period. Thirteen technical audits of the system were performed through the election process, with the end result being an…
The Philippines Supreme Court has denied a petition to extend the biometric registration deadline for eligible voters. The case came about in the last days of the registration period, which ended October 31st, as Commission on Elections (Comelec) registration sites were overwhelmed with voters seeking last-minute registrations. While registration had been open for 17 months,…
Last week at FindBiometrics we kicked off our 13th annual Year in Review while mobility and innovation were at the front of the headlines. Government applications makes up a good portion of the news too, and we featured an interview with Joe Rosenkrantz, CEO of FaceFirst. Here is a look back on the top stories…
The Philippines Supreme Court has ordered a temporary halt to the country’s Commission on Elections’ efforts to deactivate the voting eligibility of citizens who failed to register their biometric data on time. It’s the latest cliffhanger development in Comelec’s long saga of biometric voter registration. Next year’s national election is to be the first requiring…
Last week at FindBiometrics we brought Financial Biometrics Month to a close with a roundup of all the featured articles, event coverage and industry news dealing with commerce from November. We also saw a great deal of fingerprint news, government announcements, and even novel innovation in the discovery that latent fingerprints can be used to…
The Philippines Supreme Court is hearing a challenge to the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) implementation of mandatory biometric voter identification ahead of next year’s national election. Brought forward by a coalition of student and youth organizations under the wing of the Kabataan Party-list, the petition argues against the legitimacy of the biometric requirement itself. In that…
On October 11 of this year, Guinea held its presidential election, and biometrics were a key part of the process. Keeping with the increasing trend to register eligible voters’ biometrics prior to an election, the nation’s National Independent Electoral Commission, CENI, had previosuly turned to global digital security specialist Gemalto. With the goal of ensuring…
The Philippines’ Commission on Elections, or Comelec, will allow citizens to vote even if their biometric data is corrupted. The announcement comes from Comelec even as the commission forges ahead with its disenfranchisement of voters who failed to register their biometric data ahead of an October 31st deadline. While a major surge in registrant traffic…
The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (“Comelec”) has officially moved to disqualify otherwise eligible voters who failed to register their biometric data by its October 31st deadline. In a new resolution, the agency asked the Election Registration Board (ERB) to deactivate those voters’ eligibility for the 2016 election. Next year’s national election will rely on biometric…
Last week at FindBiometrics we kicked off Financial Biometrics Month with a primer designed to get you up to speed on all the most recent happenings in the identity and commerce space, including the recent Money20/20 conference. In the industry news, fingerprints and mobility proved to be prolific as usual, elections tech made its share…
The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) says that it has registered about 54.6 million voters’ biometrics, ensuring their eligibility to vote in next year’s national election. The registration period closed on October 31st. Numbers from Comelec’s regional offices are still coming in, but at this point the organization says any further adjustments to its tally…
The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) will deactivate the eligibility of a little over 100,000 voters in Davao City for next year’s national election. Voters across the country were required to register their biometric data in anticipation of the 2016 election, which will rely on biometric voter identity authentication, but the window for registration closed…
With no Supreme Court intervention to stop it, the Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) went ahead and closed its biometric voter registration system in accordance with its October 31st deadline this weekend. There had been some speculation that Comelec would be forced to extend the deadline, given a Supreme Court petition filed jointly by a…
The deadline for Philippines voters to register their biometric data ahead of next year’s election could be extended a couple of months beyond October 31st. A group called the Kabataan Party List has worked with a number of youth organizations to file a petition asking the country’s Supreme Court to force the Commission on Elections, or…
Last week at FindBiometrics we prepared to travel to Las Vegas for our Monday panel at Money20/20. We also reported on the BioConnect Launch Party in Toronto, new innovations in mobility and biometric elections around the globe. Mobile Identity Month continued in the featured articles section in the meantime, with a look at the role…
With the October 31st registration deadline imminent, unregistered voters are now flocking to the Philippines’ enrollment centers to provide their biometric identification data in anticipation of next year’s election. According to the Manila Bulletin, even the head of the country’s Commission on Elections (Comelec), Andres Bautista, was taken aback on a recent visit to a…
Integrated Biometrics has won a major contract with the Brazilian government, the company has announced. It’s going to provide over 13,000 of its Watson Mini fingerprint scanners to help register voters over the next couple of years. The Watson Minis will be distributed via regional partner Akiyama Soluções Tecnológicas, which was selected by Brazil’s Tribunal Superior Eleitoral…