According to a recent article in Extreme Tech, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has ramped up its biometric identity verification pilot by installing facial recognition systems in more airports.

Multinational technology company, Vision-Box, has deployed its Seamless Journey Platform in the new terminal at Ezeiza, Argentina’s largest international airport by passenger numbers.

While the tech giant, Apple, is essentially a consumer electronics firm that produces stylish smartphones, laptops, desktops and TVs, it is also a big user of biometrics to verify the identity of the user. Even more than that, it has never shied away from following other research areas that involve identity as a service.

A small article in the news section of March’s ID & Secure Document News noted that at the same time as European Union lawmakers are on track to ban the use of remote biometric surveillance for general law enforcement purposes, France had approved the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor public spaces for suspicious behaviour during the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Definitive proof that fingerprints are a unique biometric at birth has been published by a team of academic researchers in the journal Cell. But while the paper seems to confirm that they are unique – are fingerprints immutable and reliable?

In the patent titled ‘System and method for multi-modal continuous biometric authentication for messenger and virtual assistants,’ the method described uses multiple biometrics in the background during chatbot communications to enhance security without complicating the user experience.

In the November 2022 edition of this publication, an article examined two use cases of fingerprint readers – smartphones and payment cards.

The issue of biometric authentication of identity is a topic that has a rightful place in this newsletter. There are many aspects to this debate and last month the topics of fingerprint readers and ‘Security vs Convenience’ were explored.

Fingerprint technology has found a place in a variety of commercial use cases. We can simplify this by considering these in two broad categories – public and personal fingerprint readers.

A recent technical primer on CXO Bytes, which makes a strong case for the seemingly inevitable growth of biometrics into all aspects of digital identity, marks a good point to reflect on the ongoing debate between ‘security versus convenience’.