Quantum surveillance and 'shared secrets'. A biometric step too far? CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe, July 2010

It is no longer sensible to regard biometrics as having neutral socio-economic, legal and political impacts. Newer generation biometrics are fluid and include behavioural and emotional data that can be combined with other data. Therefore, a range of issues needs to be reviewed in light of the increasing privatisation of ‘security’ that escapes effective, democratic parliamentary and regulatory control and oversight at national, international and EU levels, argues Juliet Lodge, Professor and co-Director of the Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence at the University of Leeds, U

Analysis Of Data Stratification In A Multi-Sensor Fingerprint Dataset Using Match Score Statistics

Biometric data is an essential feature employed in testing the performance of any real time biometric recognition system prior to its usage. The variations introduced in the match performance critically determine the authenticity of the biometric data to be able to be used in an everyday scenario for the testing of biometric verification systems. This study in totality aims at understanding the impact of data stratification of a such a biometric test dataset on the match performance of each of its stratum. In order to achieve this goal, the fingerprint dataset of the West Virginia University\u27s 2012 BioCOP has been employed which is a part of the many multimodal biometric data collection projects that the University has accomplished. This test dataset has been initially segmented based on the scanners employed in the process of data acquisition to check for the variations in match performance with reference to the acquisition device. The secondary stage of data stratification included the creation of stratum based on the demographic features of the subjects in the dataset.;The main objectives this study aims to achieve are:;• Developing a framework to assess the match score distributions of each stratum..;• Assessing the match performance of demographic strata in comparison to the total dataset..;• Statistical match performance evaluation using match score statistics..;Following the generation of genuine and imposter match score distributions , Receiver Operating Characteristic Curves (ROC) were plotted to compare the match performance of each demographic stratum with respect to the total dataset. The divergence measures KLD and JSD have been calculated which signify the amount of variation between the match score distributions of each stratum. With the help of these procedures, the task of estimating the effect of data stratification on the match performance has been accomplished which serves as a measure of understanding the impact of this fingerprint dataset when used for biometric testing purposes

Comparative Performance Analysis of Different Fingerprint Biometric Scanners for Patient Matching

Unique patient identification within health services is an operational challenge in healthcare settings. Use of key identifiers, such as patient names, hospital identification numbers, national ID, and birth date are often inadequate for ensuring unique patient identification. In addition approximate string comparator algorithms, such as distance-based algorithms, have proven suboptimal for improving patient matching, especially in low-resource settings. Biometric approaches may improve unique patient identification. However, before implementing the technology in a given setting, such as health care, the right scanners should be rigorously tested to identify an optimal package for the implementation. This study aimed to investigate the effects of factors such as resolution, template size, and scan capture area on the matching performance of different fingerprint scanners for use within health care settings. Performance analysis of eight different scanners was tested using the demo application distributed as part of the Neurotech Verifinger SDK 6.0

Business plan for a provider of access control systems based on fingerprints

This master thesis consist on a business plan that describes a technology business idea planning to make an access and time attendance control service based on fingerprints through a remote system. The main characteristics of this product are a low cost system and low installation impact on client's premises, respect to existing systems on biometric market. Although some of main competitors are beginning to offer more portable and wireless technology devices, there is a market gap to cover, taking a low cost and a easy installation as core values to apply this technology in different sectors, in order to offer a good value for money ratio product to attract potential clients who intend to use biometric systems (associated with a high security, economic cost and installation impact) respect traditional access and time attendance control technologies as magnetic cards, passwords usage..etc. The aim is to provide a product to attract clients requiring these services in environments where previously this wasn't considered for their high cost and installation impact to realize shifts control and other complementary functions as authentication for a photocopier usage, meeting rooms access...etc. Therefore the product offered is not focused in offering a high security system for critical environments like an airport for example, but it's directed to those environments where the purpose is to make a flexible and economical access and/or time attendance control, providing an optimal security level through a low-cost fingerprint system with low impact in their installation (easy installation in client premises to the system work) that can be consulted through an Internet connection. The objective of this thesis is to develop a business plan, where it's seeking a business opportunity that implies a technological analysis to offer a profitable solution for a company capable of performing the requirements described, taking into account all intermediate steps to get there. Finally, after analyzing all important parameters of a business plan evaluation, we can say that it's a profitable business idea

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

Fingerprint Matching Using Minutiae Quadruplets

Fingerprint matching faces several challenges resulting from the varying quality of fingerprint scanners, the weakness of some scanners in detecting fake fingerprints and the poor performance of fingerprint matching algorithms caused by the high intraclass variations between fingerprints of the same subject. The major contributions to the high intraclass variations include high displacement between an enrolled fingerprint and an input fingerprint of the same person; rotations and occlusions caused by non-uniform finger pressure on the scanner, differences in sensed fingerprint area, dry-skin or accidents; non-linear distortion as a 3 dimensional fingerprint image is sensed by a 2 dimensional fingerprint scanner. This paper proposes a new method of matching fingerprints using geometric features termed minutiae quadruplets. The performance of the properties of minutiae quadruplets were evaluated on unprocessed datasets of database_a (110 pairs of fingerprint images) of the Fingerprint Verification Competition (FVC) 2000 database.  The evaluation resulted in genuine matches of 89 out of 110 fingerprints; and a receiver operating characteristics of about 20% off the zero axes. This entails that the properties of minutiae quadruplets may not be beneficial for fingerprint matching of unprocessed fingerprints but may be beneficial for matching of processed fingerprints

Application of LANDSAT to the surveillance of lake eutrophication in the Great Lakes basin

The author has identified the following significant results. A step-by-step procedure for establishing and monitoring the trophic status of inland lakes with the use of LANDSAT data, surface sampling, laboratory analysis, and aerial observations were demonstrated. The biomass was related to chlorophyll-a concentrations, water clarity, and trophic state. A procedure was developed for using surface sampling, LANDSAT data, and linear regression equations to produce a color-coded image of large lakes showing the distribution and concentrations of water quality parameters, causing eutrophication as well as parameters which indicate its effects. Cover categories readily derived from LANDSAT were those for which loading rates were available and were known to have major effects on the quality and quantity of runoff and lake eutrophication. Urban, barren land, cropland, grassland, forest, wetlands, and water were included

Textural features for fingerprint liveness detection

The main topic ofmy research during these three years concerned biometrics and in particular the Fingerprint Liveness Detection (FLD), namely the recognition of fake fingerprints. Fingerprints spoofing is a topical issue as evidenced by the release of the latest iPhone and Samsung Galaxy models with an embedded fingerprint reader as an alternative to passwords. Several videos posted on YouTube show how to violate these devices by using fake fingerprints which demonstrated how the problemof vulnerability to spoofing constitutes a threat to the existing fingerprint recognition systems. Despite the fact that many algorithms have been proposed so far, none of them showed the ability to clearly discriminate between real and fake fingertips. In my work, after a study of the state-of-the-art I paid a special attention on the so called textural algorithms. I first used the LBP (Local Binary Pattern) algorithm and then I worked on the introduction of the LPQ (Local Phase Quantization) and the BSIF (Binarized Statistical Image Features) algorithms in the FLD field. In the last two years I worked especially on what we called the “user specific” problem. In the extracted features we noticed the presence of characteristic related not only to the liveness but also to the different users. We have been able to improve the obtained results identifying and removing, at least partially, this user specific characteristic. Since 2009 the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Cagliari and theDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the ClarksonUniversity have organized the Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition (LivDet). I have been involved in the organization of both second and third editions of the Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition (LivDet 2011 and LivDet 2013) and I am currently involved in the acquisition of live and fake fingerprint that will be inserted in three of the LivDet 2015 datasets