Large-scale Biometrics Deployment in Europe: Identifying Challenges and Threats

With large-scale biometrics deployment in the EU still in its infancy and with stakeholders racing to position themselves in view of the lucrative market that is forecasted, a study to identify challenges and threats that need to be dealt with was launched. This is the result: a report on Biometrics large-scale Deployment in Europe. The report tackles three main issues namely, the status, security / privacy and testing / certification processes. A survey was launched so as to help reveal the actual status of Biometrics large-scale Deployment initiatives in EU. The main outcome of the survey was that an open dissemination of implementation results policy is needed mainly on deployment plans, strategies, barriers and best practices. The security/ privacy challenges study identified a number of issues, the most important of which were related to proportionality and compliance to the existing regulatory framework while at the same time it revealed an important number of related actions aiming at ensuring both data security and privacy. The aim of the Bio Testing Europe study was double: to identify and collect comparable and certified results under different technologies, vendors and environments situations and to feed in this information to animate discussion among the members of a European network which would enhance the European testing and certification capacity. The study presents an integrated picture of the identified issues as well as a number of recommendations. With some of the systems that are being implemented involving millions of individuals as target users it is important for policy makers to adopt some of the options presented so as to address the identified through the study challengesJRC.J.4-Information Societ

Automated border control systems: biometric challenges and research trends

Automated Border Control (ABC) systems automatically verify the travelers\u2019 identity using their biometric information, without the need of a manual check, by comparing the data stored in the electronic document (e.g., the e-Passport) with a live sample captured during the crossing of the border. In this paper, the hardware and software components of the biometric systems used in ABC systems are described, along with the latest challenges and research trends

Emerging biometric technologies for Automated Border Control gates

Automated Border Control (ABC) gates, or shortly e-Gates, are systems able to verify automatically the identity of the travelers through the biometric traits, and to grant passage of the border. Biometric technologies make the clearance automation possible, with a positive impact on efficiency, effectiveness, security, and usability of the process. The e-Gate compares biometric data of the traveler from an electronic document against live acquisitions, using different biometric traits. The face emerged in this area as the primary trait used by the e-Gates, with fingerprint and iris more adopted in registered traveler programs. This paper analyzes the main biometric aspects relating to both the human-machine interaction and the technologies used for ABC, and presents the emerging solutions that can produce a performance enhancement

Facial recognition for authorisation purposes (part 3)

Part 1 of our “MAPping the use of Facial Recognition in public spaces in Europe” (MAPFRE) project reports explained in detail what “facial recognition” means, addressed the issues surrounding definitions, presented the political landscape and set out the exact material and geographical scope of the study. Part 2 of our Reports presented, in the most accessible way possible, how facial recognition works and produced a “Classification Table” with illustrations, explanations and examples, detailing the uses of facial recognition/analysis in public spaces, in order to help avoid conflating the diverse ways in which facial recognition is used and to bring nuance and precision to the public debate. This 3rd Report focuses on what is, undoubtedly, the most widespread way in which Facial Recognition Technologies (FRT) are used in public (and private) spaces: Facial Recognitionfor authorisation purposes.Facial recognition is often used to authorise access to a space (e.g. access control) or to a service (e.g. to make a payment). Depending on the situation, both verification and identi fication functionalities (terms that are explained in our 2nd Report) can be used. Millions of people use FRT to unlock their phones every day. Private entities (such as banks) or public authorities (such as the French government in terms of the now abandoned ALICEM pro ject) increasingly envisage using FRT as a means of providing strong authentication in or der to control access to private or public online services, such as e-banking, or administra tive websites that concern income, health or other personal matters. FRT is increasingly being considered as a means of improving security when controlling and managing access to private areas (building entrances, goods warehouses, etc.). In public spaces, FRT is being used as an authentication tool for automated international border controls (for example at airports) or to manage access in places as diverse as airports, stadiums or schools. Pre Covid-19, there were a lot of projects to use in the future FRT in order to “accelerate people flows”, “improve the customer experience”, “speed up opera tions” and “reduce queuing time” for users of different services (e.g. passengers boarding a plane or shopping) but the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic has further boosted calls for investment in FRTs in order to provide contactless services and reduce the risk of contam ination. Supermarkets, such as Carrefour, which was involved in a pilot project in Romania, or transport utilities in “smart cities”, such as the EMT bus network in Madrid, which teamed with Mastercard to conduct a pilot project that enables users to pay on EMT buses using FRT, have implemented facial recognition payment systems that permit consumers to complete transactions by simply having their faces scanned. In Europe, similar pilot pro jects are currently being tested enabling the management of payments in restaurants, cafés and shops. Despite this widespread existing use or projected use of FRT for authorisation purposes we are not aware of any detailed study that is focusing on this specific issue. We hope that the present analytic study will help fill this gap by focusing on the specific issue of the use of FRT for authorisation purposes in public spaces in Europe. We have examined in detail seven “emblematic” cases of FRT being used for authorisation purposes in public spaces in Europe. We have reviewed the documents disseminated by data controllers concerning all of these cases (and several others). We have sought out the reactions of civil society and other actors. We have dived into EU and Member State laws. We have analysed a number of Data Protection Authority (DPA) opinions. We have iden tified Court decisions of relevance to this matter

A fast airplane boarding strategy using online seat assignment based on passenger classification

The minimization of the turnaround time, the duration which an aircraft must remain parked at the gate, is an important goal of airlines to increase their profitability. This work introduces a procedure to minimize of the turnaround time by speeding up the boarding time in passenger aircrafts. This is realized by allocating the seat numbers adaptively to passengers when they pass the boarding gate and not before. Using optical sensors, an agility measure is assigned to each person and also a measure to characterize the size of her/his hand-luggage. Based on these two values per passenger and taking into account additional constraints, like reserved seats and the belonging to a group, a novel seat allocation algorithm is introduced to minimize the boarding time. Extensive simulations show that a mean reduction of the boarding time with approximately 15% is achieved compared to existing boarding strategies. The costs of introducing the proposed procedure are negligible, while the savings of reducing the turnaround time are enormous, considering that the costs generated by inactive planes on an airport are estimated to be about 30 $ per minute

Machine learning and mixed reality for smart aviation: applications and challenges

The aviation industry is a dynamic and ever-evolving sector. As technology advances and becomes more sophisticated, the aviation industry must keep up with the changing trends. While some airlines have made investments in machine learning and mixed reality technologies, the vast majority of regional airlines continue to rely on inefficient strategies and lack digital applications. This paper investigates the state-of-the-art applications that integrate machine learning and mixed reality into the aviation industry. Smart aerospace engineering design, manufacturing, testing, and services are being explored to increase operator productivity. Autonomous systems, self-service systems, and data visualization systems are being researched to enhance passenger experience. This paper investigate safety, environmental, technological, cost, security, capacity, and regulatory challenges of smart aviation, as well as potential solutions to ensure future quality, reliability, and efficiency

Enhancing fingerprint biometrics in Automated Border Control with adaptive cohorts

Automated Border Control (ABC) systems are being increasingly used to perform a fast, accurate, and reliable verification of the travelers' identity. These systems use biometric technologies to verify the identity of the person crossing the border. In this context, fingerprint verification systems are widely adopted due to their high accuracy and user acceptance. Matching score normalization methods can improve the performance of fingerprint recognition in ABC systems and mitigate the effect of non-idealities typical of this scenario without modifying the existing biometric technologies. However, privacy protection regulations restrict the use of biometric data captured in ABC systems and can compromise the applicability of these techniques. Cohort score normalization methods based only on impostor scores provide a suitable solution, due to their limited use of sensible data and to their promising performance. In this paper, we propose a privacy-compliant and adaptive normalization approach for enhancing fingerprint recognition in ABC systems. The proposed approach computes cohort scores from an external public dataset and uses computational intelligence to learn and improve the matching score distribution. The use of a public dataset permits to apply cohort normalization strategies in contexts in which privacy protection regulations restrict the storage of biometric data. We performed a technological and a scenario evaluation using a commercial matcher currently adopted in real ABC systems and we used data simulating different conditions typical of ABC systems, obtaining encouraging results

Advanced design of Automated Border Control gates: biometric system techniques and research trends

Last few years have witnessed an ever-increasing demand of border crossing, whose processing introduces the need to speed-up the clearance process at the Border Crossing Points (BCP). Automated Border Control (ABC) gates, or shortly e-Gates, can verify the identity of the travelers crossing the borders by exploiting their biometric traits, without the need of a constant human intervention. Biometric technologies have a relevant impact on the improvement of efficiency, effectiveness and security of the checking processes. Automated biometric recognition can increase the border processing throughput of the BCP, as well as facilitate the clearance procedures. To grant the passage of the border, the e-Gate compares the biometric samples of the traveler stored into the electronic document with live acquisitions. This paper presents the latest substantial advances in the design of e-Gates. In particular, it presents the Biometric Verification System in detail, including its hardware and software components, as well as the procedures followed during the biometric verification of the traveler's identity. We address the complex issue of measuring the performance of an ABC system, considering the real applicability of the figures of merit usually adopted in biometric system's evaluation. To complete the view of the current e-Gates, we highlight the main challenges and the research trends relating to the biometric systems currently used in e-Gates