Major Cities Using Gunshot Detection Technology That Links Biometric Identity Of Shooter

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Like in the Soviet Union...   --CSR

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Major Cities Using Gunshot Detection Technology That Links Biometric Identity Of Shooter

Breaking News | November 23, 2012 | 1 Comment



(Brandon Turbeville)  With the recent announcement regarding San Diego police who are now using facial recognition technology to build and maintain a massive biometric database of their citizens, as well as the nationwide roll-out of department store dummies equipped with cameras and microphones used to recognize, record, and monitor shoppers, it appears that the biometric databasing of the American people has now been turned to overdrive.

However, treasonous law enforcement and Big Brother department store dummies are not the only methods by which the American people are being surveilled by recently introduced technology.

Now, programs have been developed that are able to detect gun shots from miles away in conjunction with high-resolution cameras and facial recognition software that allows for not only the location of the shots but the direct biometric identification of the shooter.

Essentially, the new programs being prepared for implementation all over the country (and the world), are designed to detect gun shots from a remote location via acoustic sensors. When the gunshots are detected and located through a quick process of triangulation, a high-resolution camera is then used to photograph the shooter's face, which is then processed through a biometric database to determine the person's identity. If the shooter is not yet enrolled in the police state database, the new technology can actually create a new record using the photograph.
In an excellent report entitled, "FaceFirst's biometric software can use a database of photos to identify you in public," which details the emerging facial recognition technologies, MassPrivateI, states, "The companies say this is the world's first such detector to instantly ID a shooter, and aim to make it available to law enforcement agencies and private physical security firms."

This new technology is a product of the partnership between at least two firms of the military-industrial complex that have been altered and retrofitted to appear as private industry for the domestic sector. These two firms – Safety Dynamics and Airborne Biometrics Group (ABG) – are thinly veiled creatures of the stampeding DARPA-style surveillance state and shadow government infrastructure now firmly in place the world over.

The heart of the program centers around the combination of Safety Dynamics' already operational gunshot detection software and ABG's FaceFirst facial recognition software.

As Home land Security Newswire writes,

Individuals who fire weapons with criminal intent will now have to think twice now that Safety Dynamics Inc. and FaceFirst have decided to join forces.

    Working together, Safety Dynamics will combine its gunshot detection technology with FaceFirst's facial recognition capabilities to automatically identify a shooter's face in real-time.

    Whenever Safety Dynamics' acoustic ballistic sensors detect a shot it will automatically zero in on the exact location and direct a high-resolution camera to zoom in and capture the shooter's face. At that point FaceFirst's software will run the shooter's face against a biometric database to determine their identity or create a new facial record if they are unknown.

For those who might be wondering about the source of the images contained in the "biometric database" that is referred to in the quote above, the answer is quite simple – everywhere. Although it is well-known that the US government is attempting to establish (and probably already has established) a Total Information AwarenessNetwork of surveillance on each and every American citizen, the fact is that this work has been largely done for them.

This is because, in addition to programs like NGI, US-VISIT, IDENT, and S-COMM, photo identification requirements, airports, city streets, shopping centers, and other public sources of surveillance, voluntary facial photographs like those posted on dating sites, Facebook, and personal websites also make up a great deal of the images in the new biometric database to be accessed by the new software tag team.

As GovTech.com writes,

    The technology necessary to perform facial recognition is cheaper and easier than every before, according to Facing Facts: Best Practices for Common Uses of Facial Recognition Technologies, a best practices guide released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that explores the possibilities that facial recognition technology can bring. According to the guide, a 2011 Carnegie Mellon study showed that researchers identified individuals 'in previously unidentified photos from a dating site by using facial recognition technology to match them to their Facebook profile photos.'

Facial recognition technology is indeed becoming much more affordable as are the technological capabilities to record, monitor, and store the digital, audio, and video data for literally every single American citizen as a report from the Brookings Institution entitled, "Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Governments," has suggested.

It should be noted, of course, that the FaceFirst software is especially designed to work in tandem with government "lists." This much is stated clearly on the FaceFirst website which states,

    As individuals enter your facility, FaceFirst's high-speed face-tracking camera and proprietary software instantly detect and identify all known terrorists, felons and con artists on a customized database of local, state and federal agency lists. You can also add your company's internal databases of trespassers, fired employees and other persons of interest — plus similar watch lists of other participating companies.

    Alerts are instantly sent as e-mail, SMS or MMS messaging) to the devices you specify — cell phones or PDAs or computers — so that your security staff can deny access to and/or detain the individual. You can also configure alerts to be automatically e-mailed to law enforcement authorities and/or key government officials.

    FaceFirst improves your security team's efficiency by sharpening their focus on prior offenders — before they attempt to present bogus credentials harass staff or instigate an attack.

Yet, the gunshot detection/facial recognition program is not something completely novel to the police state of America. Indeed, all across the country similar programs are being introduced and, in some locations, these types of technologies have already been in use for some time.

For instance, the SENTRI Gunshot Detection program, developed by Safety Dynamics, is actually used by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The Safety Dynamics website describes how the program works by stating, "If a shooter discharges a weapon inside the building, the SENTRI system will lock down all security doors to the bank, trapping the shooter inside. This SENTRI application demonstrates the significant value of gunshot detection for the purpose of asset protection for federal facilities—both indoors and outdoors." Admittedly, not a bad idea for high-security situations. That is, of course, unless you are unfortunate to be locked inside with the shooter.

However, other applications for SENTRI are much more questionable in nature and much more conducive to outright police state mechanisms. Indeed, these programs have been rolled out onto city streets all over the country such as Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Tuscon, and Los Angeles.

Again, one need only reference the website of Safety Dynamics to discover the basic justification and method of operation for the SENTRI Gunshot Detection programs. It states,

    State of the art technology that could play a huge role someday in fighting crime is in Tucson, AZ. It's called instant gunfire recognition–and this essentially is how it works: A shot is fired in a metropolitan area, within one second of the shooter pulling the trigger, microphones pick it up, a camera zooms in and authorities instantly have some idea who and what they're dealing with.

    'So in most cases, the shooter hasn't even begun to drop their arm yet and we're already looking at the scene,' said Wayne Lundeberg, Chief Operating Officer of Safety Dynamics: a Tucson-based company with gunshot detection technology in the US and Mexico.

In relation to the program's use in Baltimore:

    City police hope they will one day have an easier time solving shootings with the help of new technology. The latest police tool to catch criminals is being tested on top of some blue light cameras. It's gunshot detection. "The way the technology is designed is that the sensor would actually redirect the camera in the direction in which the shot sound came from," said Cheryl Goldstein with the Baltimore mayor's office. Each sensor is supposed to be able to hear a gunshot within 600 feet. That's about the distance from a blue light camera to one or two city blocks. For now there are two sensors installed in East Baltimore. The city is working with the vendor, Safety Dynamics, to make sure the system is worth the investment before buying anything. Johns Hopkins used a different vendor last year. "What the city is looking for is a gunshot technology that can identify a gunshot, and will not alert when there's other noise." said Goldstein. So far the city says the two sensors are showing promise.

Baton Rouge:

    The new gunshot detection units will allow Baton Rouge police to transport the crime prevention functions of SENTRI to areas of immediate need and special community events. Crime rates at Safety Dynamics installations typically fall 14% with the presence of the new technology and a 35% drop in shootings and calls to 911 are realized within weeks. The Baton Rouge Police like the idea of moving SENTRI to various locations in the city that are seeing high rates of crime and for local community events to increase public safety through the SENTRI's unmatched detection and localization of gunshots in less than one second.

Los Angeles:

    Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and other police officials gathered at a news conference to announce the completion of work to install Safety Dynamics' SENTRI gunshot detection for urban crime prevention in the city of Compton. SENTRI units consisting of a camera and four microphones were scattered all over town a month ago, officials said. 'As soon as it hears shots fired, boom, the cameras turn,' said sheriff's Lt. Scott Edson. The SENTRI unit is able to detect shots fired from within a quarter-mile radius and can even distinguish the type of rounds fired, said sheriff's Lt. David Telley. The unit employs neural networks, so it can listen for the temporal pattern of a gunshot and ignore similar sounds, like a bus backfire. The Sheriff's Department had tried similar technology, but Edson said the older equipment does not have cameras, only listening devices. 'It's going to be like another eye for us, which will help us apprehend any suspects,' Deputy Tony Bowie said of the new technology.

Similarly, another program related to gunshot detection that has gained much more attention in recent years is theShotspotter technology. Shotspotter is yet another program designed to recognize gunshots and transmit the information recorded to law enforcement agencies. Shotspotter is not unique to major cities; however, as even smaller areas such asRocky Mount, North Carolina are using the product. Obviously, it goes without saying that the technology comes at great cost to the average taxpayer.

Of course, the programs mentioned above are not combined with facial recognition software. However, one of Safety Dynamics' programs can be seen as a precursor to the partnership with ABG both in the sense that it was itself a partnership with another surveillance company as well as the fact that it also involved the combination of gunshot detection with surveillance cameras.

This program is the partnership between Safety Dynamics and ELSAG North America, who manufactures high-resolution cameras with an impressive reading capacity for the photographs taken. ELSAG's cameras were combined with Safety Dynamics SENTRI gunshot recognition program and the combo is now being marketed to law enforcement agencies all across the country.

None of the programs mentioned previously, however, are quite as advanced as the partnership between Safety Dynamics and ABG, the focus of this article. As previously stated, this program combines gunshot detection technology with both high-resolution cameras and facial recognition software to produce a surveillance net that is, at least currently, unparalleled in the United States. Unparalleled, at least, when compared to programs that have been officially admitted to being currently operational.

Of course, one should not be surprised that the companies developing, manufacturing, and marketing the technology of control such as ABG, Safety Dynamics, and ELSAG North America are selling their country and their fellow citizens down the river. While money itself always provides enough of a motive for the majority of people to abandon what little sense of morality and freedom they have, the fact is that these companies are not basic free-market startup initiatives. In reality, they are as much a part of the military-industrial complex as DARPA and the US military itself.

The only difference between corporations such as these and the Homeland Security/Shadow Government/Surveillance State establishment is that these companies masquerade under the cover of private enterprise. While they may be private ventures on paper, they are attached at the hip to the defense industry itself.

For instance, Airborne Biometrics Group (ABG) is actually a spin-off corporation of Airborne Technologies, Inc. (ATI), a firm founded in 1980 as "a defense contractor supplying aircraft structural parts to the U. S. government and other countries flying U.S.-manufactured aircraft." In 2003, ATI became a partner with Lockheed Martin, another giant of the military-industrial complex, solidifying its place as the first manufacturing licensee for Lockheed.

Likewise, Safety Dynamics is also a player in the military industrial complex game. Safety Dynamics is not just involved with the development of technologies such as gunshot detection programs but also with projects involving the US Navy, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and the University of Southern California Neuroscience program.

Interestingly enough, Theodore W. Berger, co-founder of Safety Dynamics is also a biomedical engineering professor at USC as part of the Center for Neural Engineering and the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC. Berger was also the recipient of the Lockheed Senior Research Award and was co-editor of Toward Replacement Parts for the Brain: Implantable Electronics as the Next Era in Neural Prosthetics published in 2001.

Berger was also involved in an experiment conducted conjointly between USC and Wake Forest University in which a brain implant was tested on rats with findings that revealed the implants could actually restore lost memories.

Lastly, ELSAG North America is actually a subsidiary of Finmeccanica, an Italy-based company which is nonetheless a part of the military-industrial complex surveillance state defense contractor world. Finmeccanica describes itself as

    one of the world's leading high-tech companies, operating in the design and manufacture of helicopters, defense electronics, civil and military aircraft, aerostructures, satellites, space infrastructures, and missiles. It plays a leading role in the European aerospace and defense industry and participates in some of the biggest international programs in the sector through well-established alliances with European and American partners.

Clearly, the United States and the rest of the world is moving toward the point of no return in regards to the surveillance state that is no longer creeping but rushing forward with lightning speed. While gunshot detector technology represents a disastrous encroachment upon the right to privacy and the fourth amendment, it is also an unfortunate reality that this technology is just one of many.

The entire world is fast reaching a point of do or die (literally) where the people who inhabit it will have to make some hard choices soon or they will be forever unable to do so.

http://govtslaves.info/major-cities-usi ... f-shooter/

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

FaceFirst Execs:

Executive Bios

Bios and background information on FaceFirst executives.

Joe Rosenkrantz  

Founder & President, Airborne Biometrics Group, Inc.

A pioneer in Internetworking and online security, Joe Rosenkrantz brings an extensive background in computer technology and engineering to ABG, serving as system architect and security advisor in addition to his leadership role. As a serial entrepreneur combining extraordinary technical and business savvy, he has a track record of successfully raising capital, commercializing products and orchestrating financially rewarding sales and acquisitions.

An alum of the University of Southern California, Mr. Rosenkrantz co-founded Pacific Netcom, Inc. in 1994. After six years of constant growth and profitability, the computer network integration and security firm was merged into SoftAware Networks in Marina Del Rey where Mr. Rosenkrantz served as Chief Technology Officer.

SoftAware subsequently was sold for $460 million in stock and cash to Digital Island where Mr. Rosenkrantz stayed on as Vice President of System Architecture. Throughout a series of mergers and acquisitions, he managed large teams of engineers in the design and implementation of global networks and product offerings.

Gifford Hesketh

Vice President of Engineering, Airborne Biometrics Group, Inc.

Gifford Hesketh has been building and optimizing software and distributed systems for over 30 years, including ten years as Principal Architect for the world's first planetary-scale Content Delivery Network. As a veteran of many successful corporate mergers and acquisitions, he also has a strong focus on creating and monetizing corporate value.

Mr. Hesketh holds a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley. He started his career working for Arthur Andersen & Co. in Tokyo, while also learning conversational Japanese. After returning to the United States, he led software integration teams working for a number of the world's top corporations, investment banks, and law firms, championing the cloud-services model for enterprises. Sandpiper Networks recruited Mr. Hesketh to continue innovating cloud-computing technology for massively-distributed services in 1998, and he stayed as a Director and Principal Architect as the company transformed into Digital Island, Cable & Wireless, Exodus, Savvis and Level 3 Communications.

In addition to diverse technical expertise including programming languages, database systems, middleware, video compression, and Internet protocols, Mr. Hesketh also has a long history studying martial arts and wears a black belt accredited by the World Taekwondo Federation.

Peter Wollons

Chairman of the Board, Airborne Biometrics Group

CEO, Airborne Technologies, Inc.

Mr. Wollons is a graduate of Woodbury College in Glendale California with a degree in Accounting and is the C.E.O. of Airborne Technologies Inc. He began his long career in the aerospace industry in 1973, as founder of Flight Products, Inc., in southern California. Rapid growth led to overseas offices in Paris, Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Tokyo. In 1980, after a buyout of a previous partner, Peter Wollons and Gary Ferris founded Airborne Technologies, Inc. (ATI). In 1990 ATI moved to its current Camarillo, California Facilities. With ATI's vast knowledge of manufacturing complex structural parts and assemblies, ATI has become a major Certified Parts Licensee of Lockheed Martin and a supplier of aircraft components to the U.S. government and to countries throughout the free world flying U.S. made Military Aircraft.

Gary Ferris

Executive Vice President, Airborne Biometrics Group

President, Airborne Technologies, Inc.

Mr. Ferris is a graduate of California State University, Northridge with a degree in Business / Marketing. In 1973 while completing his college education, he joined Flight Products and in a short time became extremely knowledgeable of the aerospace industry. Mr. Ferris and Mr. Wollons co-founded Airborne Technologies, Inc., (ATI) in 1980. As President of ATI, Mr. Ferris oversees all daily operations of the company. Mr. Ferris was instrumental in establishing ATI as the first manufacturing Licensee of Lockheed Martin's C-130 Hercules Program. ATI is one of Lockheed Martin's largest suppliers sustaining their government C-130 support and licenses program.

Along with Mr. Wollons, Mr. Ferris was a major shareholder and board member of USA Information Systems in Virginia Beach Virginia. This very successful software development company specialized in database integration and searchable database products for the U.S. Government and military-related companies. The Company was sold to Information Handling Systems in Denver Colorado in 2004.

http://www.facefirst.com/bios.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

G-D*mned J'merica...--CSR

Airborne and OLAM reach reseller agreement

Monday, February 21, 2011

Airborne Biometrics Group, a biometrics industry investment and development group, has announced a reseller agreement with technology systems provider OLAM Development group. The agreement is intended to help bring Airborne's FaceFirstTM Face Recognition Solution to the U.S. Midwest.

The FaceFirstTM solution works with a cloud-based architecture so that encoded surveillance video data is sent to a remote database for matching and is designed for use within corporate atmospheres, mobile phones and digital SLR cameras.

In addition to being presented as a means of logical or physical access control, Airborne sees it as a great law enforcement solution as already existent urban video surveillance can be augmented to include FaceFirstTM and can alert officers if a wanted person with a mugshot on file enters the surveillance. [end]

http://www.thirdfactor.com/2011/02/21/a ... -agreement
More idiot ...    in development...--CSR

Bleeding-edge Biometrics

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

DNA, odor, ear and other modalities on the horizon
Zack Martin, Editor, Avisian Publications

Biometric technology has been around for more than a century, with its earliest and most common uses centered in law enforcement.

In the past decades, application of the technology has extended to the identification and authentication of individuals at border crossings, onto computer networks and into physical spaces.

The triumvirate–finger, face and iris–remain the top three modalities but there are others waiting in the wings. Some, like DNA, have been around for years but are being adapted to new identity-focused use cases. Others are fusing existing a to create new solutions while another set seem completely new.

It may be some time before the triumvirate is unseated by another modality but there are some bleeding edge biometrics on the horizon that could change the way individual's login to computer systems or gain access to secure areas.

Active authentication

In recent years the federal government has been waging a war on passwords. Between the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Active Authentication project, the government wants stronger ways to identify individuals online, says Richard Guidorizzi, project manager for Active Authentication at DARPA.

Easy passwords are easily compromised and complicated passwords are difficult to remember and thus often written down, Guidorizzi says. Moreover, a password isn't truly tied to the individual.

DARPA wants a solution that doesn't just identify an individual when they're trying to access a specific network or file. They want one that constantly identifies the individual at the keyboard, Guidorizzi explains. "We want to make the computer aware, tying the identity to the access of a system," he says.

Initially the Active Authentication project will look at biometrics that require no additional hardware. Some examples cited by DARPA include the manner in which the user handles a mouse or crafts written language in an e-mail or document. An emphasis will be placed on validating any new biometrics with tests to ensure they would be effective in large-scale deployments.

Later the program will look at solutions that integrate any biometric using an authentication platform suitable for deployment on a standard Defense Department computer. The goal is to combine multiple modalities for continuous user identification and authentication in a way that is accurate and transparent to the normal computing experience.

The authentication platform will be developed with open API to enable future integration of additional software or hardware biometrics.
Bioimpedance offers always-on possibilities

While DARPA looks at Active Authentication ad how it can be used to secure computer systems, there are other providers creating new biometrics that would do almost constant authentication.

Researchers at Dartmouth College are working with sensor-equipped bracelets that passively take biometric readings for heath care identification.

The team is exploring how the bracelet could be used to authenticate the wearer and identify medical needs using bioimpedance as a metric. Bioimpedance measures the flow of electrical current through living tissue. This technology could simplify medical record gathering and share pertinent information in a life-threatening situation.  

The device has the potential to be used in scenarios from fitness applications to smoking cessation programs.

The project is still in its early stages and there are issues to resolve before the technology is viable. One of these is dealing with the variable measures of bioimpedance and how they change over time, although using the sensor in a bracelet form utilizes an area of the body that has less instability due to its tendency to not significantly add fat or muscle. Gait, feet and bio-soles

Another modality that requires no out of the ordinary interaction is being investigated at Carnegie Mellon University's new Pedo-Biometrics Lab. A project to produce biometric shoe insoles able to identify a person by their gait could prove a unique way to control access to high-security areas.

The Pedo-Biometrics Lab is a partnership with Canadian company Autonomous ID and has $1.5 million in startup funding. Autonomous ID has been working on the bio-sole project since 2009, hoping to produce a relatively cheap yet accurate identification solution.

The prototype bio-soles are the same thickness as a typical shoe insole sold in a drug store. They've been tested on a variety of people in all shapes and sizes and have had an accuracy rate of 99%. According to lab staff, they are able to confirm identification within three steps and can adapt to changes in a person's gait, such as injury or fatigue.

DNA: from the crime lab to access control

Anyone familiar with procedural crime dramas knows about DNA. From any number of sources it's the DNA that conclusively links the criminal to the crime. But could DNA also be used as a biometric for identification?

It seems like science fiction, but not for much longer, says John Mears, director of biometric solutions at Lockheed Martin. "People talk about DNA as a forensic tool but now we are looking at it as a biometric," he explains. "It really is just like a fingerprint, you're looking at certain sections of the genome but it doesn't tell anything about you personally–we're calling it a DNA fingerprint."

The eventual goal is to create a system that can capture and code DNA quickly, search a database and return results in the same way fingerprint databases function, Mears explains.

THE FBI's DNA database, Combined DNA Index System or CODIS, takes 13 sections from the genome that carries from person to person and creates a unique identifying number. "You can tell the sex of the person but the parts of the genome you look at are only good for identification, so there is no personally identifiable information associated with it," Mears says.

In forensic labs, the DNA testing done is commonly referred to as PCR, or polymerase chain reaction. The testing takes six different instruments that range in price from $35,000 to $250,000.

Lockheed Martin is trying to reduce that expense by creating a small plastic sensor that an individual can use to obtain a cell sample via a cheek swab, extract the DNA and gather the specific segments for the PCR test.

The sensor is then plugged into a machine about the size of a desktop server and results are returned within 90 minutes, Mears says. Only minimal training would be required to run the system, as it's intended to be operated by police officers in local jurisdictions.

"The idea is to have it like fingerprints," Mears says. "While you're holding a person you can get the results back and find out if they need to be detained for another crime."

Noses and ears at work

A bleeding edge technology with multiple potential applications is odor biometrics. An individual's body odor is genetically determined and can be tracked, says Mears. The idea is to create a sensor that replicates a dog's nose, which is estimated to be 100 times better than that of a human. Such a sensor could recognize subtle differences for authentication or identification purposes.

Additionally, body odor changes under stress. This could expand the modality to identify individuals and determine if a person is experiencing stress, perhaps due to lying.  

Biometric sensors capable of detecting odor could be used to find harmful compounds such as explosives and other contraband. They could also be used to detect harmful bacteria or if an individual is carrying a contagion, Mears says.

There is also the possibility of combining odor and DNA. The odor biometric could locate an individual's specific skin cells, which are left just about everywhere, and then the DNA could test those same cells, Mears says.

The human ear is another pattern unique to each individual. The ear may be as unique a pattern as the fingerprint and iris, says Bryan Ichikawa, senior manager in Enterprise Risk Services at Deloitte and Touche. The challenge is capturing an image as ears are often obscured by hair.

Capture devices would likely require infrared capabilities, similar to those used for 3D facial recognition systems.  

Your voice is your passport

While not as bleeding edge as some modalities, voice may become a major player in future authentication systems. "One-to-one matching is becoming more prevalent when it comes to authentication," says Mears. And this is an ideal application for voice.

The forensic capabilities of voice have been used to identify speakers in one-to-many environments, but one-to-one authentication is proving to be the modality's strong suit. Financial services and other high-value transaction industries are putting it to use today, for example, when individuals call stockbrokers and are verified before initiating a trade.

Voice can be an ideal complement alongside other biometric modalities, Mears says. Multi-modal biometrics, which has long been discussed but seen few deployments, is another trend he sees on the horizon, especially when it comes to no-touch biometrics.

The combination of face and iris biometrics is one that could gain popularity, especially at border crossing and in airport security settings, Mears says. "This is good for a number of reasons, cultural issues, not wanting to transmit disease," he adds. "It is less invasive that can be done at a distance before they get to a checkpoint."

Additionally, it doesn't require a user to cooperate with the system. While waiting in line the biometrics could be collected and run before they reach a checkpoint. They could even be used in covert situations, says Ichikawa.  

A new wrinkle on fingerprint

The idea of identification at a distance was also behind the technology for IDair, a long-range fingerprint biometric company that spun off from Advanced Optical Systems, says Joel Burcham, president at IDair.

Originally, Burcham was looking at capturing face, fingerprints and iris all at once with a single sensor. "A lot of people were doing iris and face but fingerprint from a distance wasn't there," he says.

After a couple of years a system was able to capture fingerprints from more than six feet and Advanced Optical Systems decided to spin the company off forming IDair with Burcham at the helm.

The company is selling two products, AIRprint and ONEprint. The former captures all ten fingerprints from more than six feet away, Burcham says. While AIRprint has received significant interest from potential users, it has not yet found its niche. Part of the reason is that individuals would have to hold their hands in front of them with the palms up when approaching a sensor. "It's just a step too far ahead," he says.

The ONEprint system is a different story. The physical access control reader is beta testing with a handful of end users and one full deployment, Burcham says. Because it's a no-touch sensor the technology is seeing a lot of interest outside the U.S. where hygiene concerns are heightened.

The scanner is different from other fingerprint scanners because the user never touches anything. Instead of placing a finger on an optical or silicon fingerprint scanner the individual places the index finger under a scanner which captures the image from a few inches away.

The device uses a proprietary algorithm but the optics are not proprietary. They are the equivalent of an iPhone 3G camera, Burcham explains.
New modalities and the changing nature of authentication

While interesting new modalities–from DNA and bioimpedance to ears, odor and voice–are moving beyond the lab and into real use, it may well be transparency that proves to be the real game changer.

Between no touch and standoff biometrics there's the possibility that individuals may have little to no interaction when authenticating an identity in the future. And as biometrics become more commonplace in everyday life, it may be that individuals don't even know they're being verified as they walk into an office building or sit at their desk

http://www.thirdfactor.com/2013/01/15/b ... tag=Facial