Speed Read

Clearview AI's Facial Recognition Tool Coming to Apps, Schools (Reuters, May 25, 2022)
Clearview AI is expanding sales of its facial recognition software to companies from mainly serving the police, it told Reuters, inviting scrutiny on how the startup capitalizes on billions of photos it scrapes from social media profiles. Sales could be significant for Clearview, a presenter on Wednesday at the Montgomery Summit investor conference in California. It fuels an emerging debate over the ethics of leveraging disputed data to design artificial intelligence systems such as facial recognition. Clearview's usage of publicly available photos to train its tool draws it high marks for accuracy. The United Kingdom and Italy fined Clearview for breaking privacy laws by collecting online images without consent, and the company this month settled with U.S. rights activists over similar allegations.


 

Facial Recognition Technology Will be Available to GardaĆ­ to Help Identify Suspects Under New Law (Independent.Ie, May 25, 2022)

Gardaí will be given powers to use facial recognition technology to identify suspects in serious crimes for the first time. Justice Minister Helen McEntee is seeking cabinet approval to allow the use of special software to catch killers and child predators as well as ruling out innocent people in investigations. Ms McEntee is also expected to tell gardaí today that national security and public safety must override the right to privacy in certain instances. The move is likely to raise concern among civil rights groups, although the legislation will have safeguards to ensure full compliance with human rights, GDPR and data protection laws. The focus of the legislation will be to help gardaí investigate cases of murder, child exploitation and missing persons.


 

Today in Food Commerce: Supermarkets Add Biometric Payment Capabilities; Ultrafast Grocer Cuts 300 Jobs (PYMNTS, May 25, 2022)
Today in food commerce, biometric payments options expand to more grocers, while Gorillas plans to lay off 300 employees. Plus, Walmart aims to complete 1 million drone deliveries by the year’s end, and a restaurant owner discusses with PYMNTS how artificial intelligence (AI) is revitalizing the brand’s phone ordering business. As grocery shoppers who are used to the speed and convenience of online shopping grow frustrated with the time-intensive process of traditional checkout, businesses are finding new ways to remove friction from the payment process. Last week, Mastercard announced the addition of biometric payment options, and Amazon brought its pay-by-palm capabilities to new Whole Foods Market locations.
 

Poll: How do You Feel About GardaĆ­ Using Facial Recognition Technology to Identify Suspects? (TheJournal.ie, May 25, 2022)

GARDAÍ ARE SET to be granted new powers to use facial-recognition technology that could lead to the rapid identification of criminals. The technology enables police forces to carry out automated searches of video footage for suspects in criminal investigations. Minister for Justice Helen McEntee is expected to announce the move at the Garda Representative Association annual conference today. The minister will say the introduction of facial-recognition technology will greatly assist murder, child exploitation and missing persons investigations. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) said it is “strongly opposed” to the technology being used by law enforcement, saying An Garda Síochána has a “poor record on data protection”.


 

India to Use WhatsApp to Access Digital ID Documents (PYMNTS, May 25, 2022)

India’s government has said its citizens will be able to access various official documents through the popular messaging app WhatsApp, a report said Tuesday (May 24). This will come with the integration with the country’s Digilocker digital documentation initiative into WhatsApp. With more than 487 million users, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in India. The report notes how integral Meta’s WhatsApp is to so many people, with more reliance on it to do more things in life. The report from Social Media Today noted that Meta would like WhatsApp to be as essential in India as WeChat is in China, where people need it to show their health status through barcodes in the app to get onto public transport or to travel. “Many people outside China either still haven’t heard of WeChat or they think it’s the country’s equivalent of popular messaging service WhatsApp or social media giant Facebook,” the South China Morning Post wrote. “For many people in China, WeChat is much more — it is not an overstatement to say it’s an indispensable part of their everyday lives.”




Events

Identity Week America, October 4 - 5, 2022 (Terrapinn, May 25, 2022)
IDENTITY WEEK is the most important identity event in the USA. IDENTITY WEEK is a conference and exhibition bringing together the brightest minds in the identity sector to promote innovation, new thinking, and more effective identity solutions. Key areas of focus include secure physical credentials, digital identity, and advanced authentication technologies, such as biometrics.

 

Copyright © 2024 by the International Biometrics & Identity Association (IBIA)