In recent months, many companies have made headlines for selling biometric technology to police forces around the world. Microsoft, on the other hand, has done the opposite. Speaking at a conference at Stanford, company President Brad Smith revealed that Microsoft refused to sell its facial recognition tech to an unnamed law enforcement agency in California.…
This week’s most-read articles on FindBiometrics cover a range of topics, including liveness detection, security in the Internet of Things, and even a bit of biometrics controversy. First, though, some good news. Despite incursions from facial recognition in the wake of Apple’s launch of Face ID, the overall fingerprint biometrics market is going to continue…
“…Microsoft has stated that it is not involved in a partnership with SenseNets, and that it has asked the company to remove the Microsoft logo from its website as it had been used without permission.” Microsoft is denying that its technology is being used in an intrusive and controversial Chinese surveillance program after being implicated…
Facial recognition proved to be the hot topic with respect to this week’s most-read articles on FindBiometrics, though a couple of other important trends also shared the spotlight. One of the latter was the ongoing integration of biometric technologies into consumer laptops and PCs, in this case from Microsoft: Microsoft Patents a Windows Key Fingerprint…
Over the past year, some smartphone manufacturers have started phasing out dedicated fingerprint readers in favor of in-display fingerprint sensors. Now a recently published patent suggests that Microsoft is looking into alternative sensor placements with its laptops. According to the patent, Microsoft would embed a fingerprint sensor in the Windows key, thereby inserting its fingerprint…
“Our customers seek simplified, cost-effective central authentication services that accommodate both roving and single-device users without having to issue and manage tokens or pay personal data plan costs for users to use a personal device for work. The fact that SAML is ubiquitous makes getting more value from a BIO-key investment much more simple.” –…
Amazon is now calling for government regulation of facial recognition technology, even as it defends sales of its own such technology to law enforcement authorities. In a new post on the Amazon Web Services Machine Learning blog, the company’s VP of Global Public Policy, Michael Punke, writes, “We support the calls for an appropriate national…
Microsoft’s top leadership continue to call for regulation of the facial recognition industry, this time with CEO Satya Nadella making the case in a talk at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “In the marketplace there’s no discrimination between the right use and the wrong use,” he said, regarding practices concerning the development and sale…
“By targeting three of the world’s biggest tech companies, the letters could help to focus attention on the issue.” A coalition of 85 advocacy and activist groups have signed open letters urging Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to pledge not to sell facial recognition technology to government authorities. Signatories include the American Civil Liberties Union, the…
“GoTrust ID is designed to authenticate a user based on device identification with respect to Android and iOS smartphones, together with facial, fingerprint, and or iris recognition, depending on a given device’s capabilities. “ Acer is bringing passwordless authentication to more consumers, care of GoTrust. The companies have announced that the latter’s GoTrust ID authentication…
An AI research group based in New York University has issued a new paper calling for government regulation of artificial intelligence technologies. Called AI Now, the group is headed by employees from major tech companies including Google and Microsoft. Its latest publication, simply titled “AI Now Report 2018”, highlights the growing use of AI technologies…
A new Windows 10 update has delivered FIDO2 authentication, with Microsoft placing its Windows Hello biometric authentication platform closer to front and center for end users. With respect to the latter, Windows’ development team has now placed a Windows Hello setup button right on the OS’s lock screen. It’s clearly a move aimed at encouraging…
At a time of heightened controversy around government use of facial recognition technology, Trueface is laying out its own ethical guidelines for ‘responsibly deployed facial recognition’. Writing in a Medium post, Trueface CEO Shaun Moore groups his firm’s ethos under three main headings. The first, and perhaps most important, is “Humanity First”, a reference to…
“[ID R&D’s] participation in the program will allow it to launch a cloud service through which other developers will be able to take advantage of its solutions.” ID R&D has been accepted into Microsoft’s IoT & AI Insider Labs program, the company has announced. IoT & AI Insider Labs is essentially aimed at accelerating the development…
Microsoft President Brad Smith is once again calling for government regulation of facial recognition technology. Smith made the case at this week’s Web Summit conference in Lisbon, sharing the stage with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. He noted that facial recognition could soon be used to let retailers identify consumers and their purchase history…
![[Money20/20] The Heavy Lifting is Done, Time to Implement FIDO2: McDowell](https://16sp2o45qs973i2kpolavg37-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/assets/M2020Pool-Party-3-620x350.jpg)
FIDO Alliance Executive Director Brett McDowell took the stage with digital financial services expert David Birch on Money20/20’s opening day, and took the opportunity to make the case for the implementation of FIDO standards in financial services (and everywhere else). Speaking to Birch as part of the “Identity Around the World: Global Case Studies in…
It looks like Google is preparing to bring a Face Unlock system to future devices running on its Chrome OS. The revelation comes by way of some newly added code in Chrome’s back-end. While the clues offered in code snippets can sometimes be a bit ambiguous, this sample seems pretty clear, with its key line…
The Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Facebook, and Microsoft together made unlikely partners in a recent joint briefing to the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors. The briefing revolved around the efforts taken by these organizations to prevent the kind of meddling seen…
Microsoft has officially announced that FIDO2-based web authentication has come to its Edge browser. First announced this April, the FIDO Alliance’s latest authentication standard features a core component called WebAuthn API. It’s designed to empower users of web browsers with convenient and highly secure authentication options, including facial recognition, a fingerprint scan on a paired…