Biometrics Are Being Used to Establish Digital Trust

From ID documents to digital public infrastructure. Thales is making Sri Lanka’s new biometric passports, software providers like Wise AI and Liquid are tackling APAC’s fraud flood

Top stories this week include Thales producing Sri Lanka’s biometric passports, and Microsoft warning about the threat of AI-generated content.

This week’s top biometrics news includes Thales producing Sri Lanka’s biometric passports, and Microsoft warning about the threat of AI-generated content.

Sri Lanka’s new biometric passports are being produced by Thales, in partnership with JITT. An initial 100,000 passports are expected to be delivered within a year, and the Dominican Republic is preparing to tender the contract for its biometric passports.

Uganda is launching a new digital ID system which will include ID cards for foreign residents, according to the ED of the country’s identity authority. An ‘Alien Register’ has been planned for some time, but was delayed during a transition to technology supplied by Veridos and the Uganda Security Printing Company (USPC).

Both permanent residency and citizenship applicants in Romania will now have their fingerprints and face scans collected as part of the immigration process. The country says it is aligning its immigration system with the EU’s GDPR, while also planning to meet the criteria for the U.S. Visa Waiver Program.

Vietnam’s ‘Project 06’ digital transformation plan is progressing with digital identity at its center, and biometrics adoption is up with the draft Law on Citizen Identification taking effect. NEC Asia Pacific provides the national ID system’s biometric backbone, and Thales is a biometrics partner to VNPT, but rising demand is also bringing new players into the market.

A FICO survey shows the Asia-Pacific region is grappling with the twin challenges of high and rising fraud rates and consumer expectations for fast and smooth onboarding processes. These trends are behind the advance of biometrics in Vietnam, but also Thailand’s attempts to launch a digital wallet, and ambitious targets for identity verification providers like Wise AI and Liquid.

According to new figures released by the government, 1.38 billion people have registered for Aadhaar in India. The Unified Payment Interface has been used in more than 13.88 billion financial transactions, and DigiLocker is up to 300 million users. A new report shows the widespread regard in the country for the importance of digital trust.

A report from the WEF suggests that digital public infrastructure could play a major role in increasing gender parity in economic participation and access to healthcare and education. At the same time, MOSIP introduces a tool for assessing gender inclusivity in DPI and digital identity systems, developed by Oregon State University.

Arizona is making its Idemia-supplied mobile driver’s licenses acceptable as proof of age with limited disclosure using the Smart ID Verifier app for iPhones. Similarly, Ohio has made its mDL available in Apple Wallet, and also launched its own age verification app for businesses.

An oversight body says a fraud prevention provider used by Login.gov may have sent PII related to authentication for over 57,000 people logging onto the IRS website to unauthorized locations outside of the United States. The IRS also failed to perform required continuous monitoring for an additional 600,000 interactions, potentially putting Login.gov authentication data at risk.

A Microsoft white paper on content generated and manipulated by AI is intended to spur policy-makers to action on deepfakes and AI regulation more generally, and the CDT has recommendations for generative AI developers ahead of the U.S. election. Like the political situation itself, people creating a social environment in which they are comfortable sharing fakes for LOLs are capable only of making the situation worse.

Biometric Update Managing Editor Chris Burt interviewed David Burnett this week about ZeroBiometrics’ market-ready innovation in biometrics and cryptography that delivers privacy-preserving authentication without storing any sensitive data.

The U.S. CSPC is telling people to stop using the biometric feature on gun safes from Owsoo and Cacagoo immediately. The subpar products have been found to have poor false acceptance rates, making them dangerously insecure, and demonstrating the importance of rejecting inferior biometric security products.

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