Despite praise from OFSTED, describing UK Biometrics’ fingerprint entry systems as “protecting children from harm”, combined with their triumph in scooping the “most innovative product” award at 2006 NMT awards, Sarah Teather thinks UK biometrics and similar firms are worse than thieves. Probably not quite as bad as the people they protect our kids from, eh Sarah?

Speaking to the Sunday Express on the recent installation at Snapdragons Nursery in Bath of a biometric ‘fingerprint recognition’ door access system, Liberal Democrat Shadow Education Secretary Sarah Teather MP claimed biometric system developers were “Worse than thieves” since someone could close a bank account if their PIN was stolen, whereas biometric systems took a child’s identity for life.

Matthew James, UK Biometrics Managing Director and supplier of the biometric access system installed at Snapdragons Nursery said: “I would have thought a Shadow Minister would check her facts before branding a responsible industry as worse then identity thieves. The biometric access system installed at Snapdragons Nursery in Bath does not scan children’s fingerprints; it registers parents and staff to allow secure door access. Our biometric access systems protect children and staff throughout the UK. Biometric access is welcomed by teachers, parents and education professionals. Sarah Teather is not a teacher or a parent and she clearly does not understand the science”.

Matthew James continued: “Biometrics is the only access system that cannot be lost, stolen, copied or hacked. Once installed teachers and carers can focus on childcare secure in the knowledge that unauthorised persons cannot gain access to the building. By casting unfounded aspersions on the biometrics industry Sarah Teather is guilty of engaging in sound bite politics and is spreading alarmist claptrap among parents”.

For more pearls of wisdom like this, vote for the Liberal Democrats.

Source

AUSTRALIA - The detainment of Cornelia Rau - incorrectly adjudged to be a foreign national - could have been prevented by an upcoming smart card scheme, a Senate committee heard today.

Rau was held by immigration authorities for almost a year.  Patricia Scott, secretary for the Department of Human Services, is confident that the proposed Access card, containing biometric photo and other personal infomration, would have prevented the incident.

The card has been subject to the introduction of draft laws which are intended to culminate in the Access Card replacing the current Medicare cards, providing access to up to 16 government health and welfare services.

Source - News.com.au

One of the world’s wealthiest countries per capita, Brunei is set to embrace biometric technology by adding fingerprint scanning to their passport registration system.

Read all about it..

De La Rue Smurfit is supplying a new ePassport containing a highly secure 72kB chip to the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. The Irish Government issued the first books on 16 October 2006, in advance of the United States visa waiver programme deadline of 26 October 2006. De La Rue Smurfit supplied around 700,000 Irish Passports last year. The new document is fully compliant with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) 9303 standard.

The ePassport features a contactless 72 kB chip which stores the bearer’s biographical details, as they appear on the details page of the passport, and a digital image of the bearer. De La Rue produces 34 and 66 page books for the Irish Government in secure, controlled and audited conditions. They are manufactured in one of De La Rue’s high-technology ePassport production sites within the European Union. The confidentiality and integrity of the documents are secured during the Department of Foreign Affairs’ personalisation process. Layered technologies including digital signatures, Basic Access Control (BAC) to protect against electronic eavesdropping and data ‘skimming’ of the chip, and Active Authentication to prevent cloning are employed in the ePassport.

De La Rue is also responsible for producing the Irish emergency passport issued by the Government to citizens who have urgent travel requirements but do not have time to receive a standard passport through the usual application process. Emergency passports are personalised at the three Passport Offices in Ireland and more than 60 Irish Diplomatic and Consular Missions overseas. The data page is secured by De La Rue’s MLIS™ solution, which is used by some 25 issuing authorities worldwide and is fully compliant with ICAO 9303.

Commenting on the contract, Paul Wilson, Managing Director of De La Rue Identity Systems said:

“De La Rue has been involved in setting the future direction of ePassport developments with international standards bodies and has focused on the performance, security and readability of its solution. Extensive testing ensures that De La Rue’s ePassport exceeds industry standards.”

The USA’s General Services Administration (GSA) has approved several biometrics software products from Aware Inc, for use in Personal Identity Verification (PIV) solutions for federal employees and contractors.

Aware managed to gain approval for products in five categories: Fingerprint Capture Station, Facial Image Capture Middleware, Facial Image Capture Station (Physical), Template Generator, and Template Matcher.

The approval is important because the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has directed federal agencies to purchase only products and services from the GSA Approved Products List for the implementation of their PIV solutions.

According to David Benini, Aware’s director of product marketing: “The GSA product evaluation program defines more than twenty product and service categories and maintains a list of products approved for each category, which government agencies and integrators can then

reference to assemble a comprehensive solution.”

More information on GSA’s FIPS 201 Evaluation Program and the GSA’s Approved FIPS 201 Products and Services List can be found online at: http://fips201ep.cio.gov. More information about Aware’s biometric software product offerings for PIV is available online at http://www.aware.com/piv