Dozens of companies including national leisure centre chains are reviewing or pulling facial recognition technology and fingerprint scanning used to monitor staff attendance after a clampdown by the UK's data watchdog. In February, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) ordered a Serco subsidiary to stop using biometrics to monitor the attendance of staff at leisure centres it operates and also issued more stringent guidance on the use of facial recognition and fingerprint scanning. The ICO found that the biometric data of more than 2,000 employees had been unlawfully processed at 38 centres managed by Serco Leisure to check their attendance using facial recognition technology and in two cases via fingerprint scanning systems. Serco was given three months by the ICO to make its systems compliant and has said it will fully comply within that period. In light of the ICO decision, a number of other leisure centre operators and companies are either reviewing or stopping use of similar biometric technology to monitor staff attendance.

The U.K.'s privacy watchdog has warned against use of so-called "emotion analysis" technologies for anything more serious than kids' party games, saying there's a discrimination risk attached to applying "immature" biometric tech that makes pseudoscientific claims about being able to recognize people's emotions using AI to interpret biometric data inputs. Such AI systems'function', if we can use the word, by claiming to be able to'read the tea leaves' of one or more biometric signals, such as heart rate, eye movements, facial expression, skin moisture, gait tracking, vocal tone etc, and perform emotion detection or sentiment analysis to predict how the person is feeling -- presumably after being trained on a bunch of visual data of faces frowning, faces smiling etc (but you can immediately see the problem with trying to assign individual facial expressions to absolute emotional states -- because no two people, and often no two emotional states, are the same; hence hello pseudoscience!). The watchdog's deputy commissioner, Stephen Bonner, appears to agree that this high tech nonsense must be stopped -- saying today there's no evidence that such technologies do actually work as claimed (or that they will ever work). "Developments in the biometrics and emotion AI market are immature. They may not work yet, or indeed ever," he warned in a statement. "While there are opportunities present, the risks are currently greater.

Biometrics are reaching a crucial point in the adoption curve, with a Mastercard survey showing and a Juniper report forecasting that people are ready to use new technologies, and convinced of the main value proposition of biometric technology. People have privacy and security concerns, however, and a hacker group showed why this week. Facial recognition also made headlines for research from Herta and academics on look-alikes, a possible new regional HQ for NtechLab, and UK trust framework certification for Amiqus. NIST's image quality standard is now on a timeline, meanwhile, and details emerged in IriTech's search for a strategic investor. A Mastercard survey indicates that roughly seven out of ten consumers find biometrics easier and more secure than other authentication options, but just over half are willing to use the technology to save time.

Yet many of these systems are not accessible to people who experience different kinds of disability exclusion. Different personal characteristics may impact any or all of the physical (DNA, fingerprints, face or retina) and behavioral (gesture, gait, voice) characteristics listed in the RFI as examples of biometric signals. We define disability here in terms of the discriminatory and often systemic problems with available infrastructure's ability to meet the needs of all people [UN 2017, Oliver, 2013). Using this definition, "[biometrics] could either mitigate or amplify disability depending on how they are designed." (Guo, 2019). As Whittaker and colleauges (2019) state, this is not simply a matter of algorithmic accuracy: "...discrimination against people of color, women, and other historically marginalized groups has often been justified by representing these groups as disabled . Thus disability is entwined with, and serves to justify, practices of marginalization." It is critical that we look beyond inclusion to full and fully accommodated participation.

India's Central Information Commission (CIC) has criticized the Delhi Police for giving "patently incorrect" replies to Right to Information (RTI) requests on its use of face detection technology during riots in northeast Delhi in 2020, reports Mint. The CIC, a body set up to help individuals acquire information when other routes fail, has insisted that the Delhi Police provide revised responses to information requests. According to the report, the CIC said the Delhi Police responses suffer from "legal infirmities" and demonstrate "no application of mind." There appear to be eight or nine findings against Delhi Police on the Decisions section of the CIC website concerning the issues of the riots and other cases, outlining the back and forth between appellant and the respondent, including scans of the handwritten correspondence. The CIC has asked for clarity on the use of its face detection technology, its accuracy, what database was used for comparison and whether biometrics were used in the North East Delhi Riots, where Hindu mobs attacked Muslims and their properties, leaving more than 50 dead, the majority Muslims, reported the Guardian.

Prior to the epidemic, AI implementation in the banking industry was extremely sluggish. When the world came to a halt, financial firms and their associates throughout the world were finally compelled to automate the remainder of their banking operations and make them truly consumer-centric. What does the world of 2022 hold? Here are some of the finest fintech trends to keep a watch on in 2022! This or that, digital banking and fintech companies are anticipated worldwide to only keep going up.

For more than 100 years, recording people's fingerprints has involved them pressing their fingertips against a surface. Originally this involved ink but has since moved to sensors embedded in scanners at airports and phone screens. The next stage of fingerprinting doesn't involve touching anything at all. So-called contactless fingerprinting technology uses your phone's camera and image processing algorithms to capture people's fingerprints. Hold your hand in front of the camera lens and the software can identify and record all the lines and swirls on your fingertips.

Future Identity has released its latest digital report focusing on "the high cost of cheap biometrics," which argues that choosing the right identity technology partner can make a substantial difference for banks. Future Identity opens by stating that 75 percent of banks have, or are planning to deploy, artificial intelligence (AI)-based biometrics in the next three years. Because of this, the development of such technologies has progressed greatly in recent times, as also highlighted by recent data from Future Market Insight (FMI) suggesting the identity verification market is estimated to reach a value of nearly $40 billion by 2032, with biometrics being at the forefront of this growth. That forecast represents compound annual growth of nearly 15 percent from an estimated $8.6 billion in 2021. The biometrics industry has recently experienced rapid growth as a result, the report says.

All it took was public outrage, a widespread campaign, and political condemnation for the IRS to reverse its plans to require facial recognition for access to certain online services. In abandoning its intention to require tax-payers to upload images of their government-issued IDs and video selfies to controversial third-party company ID.me, the IRS has acknowledged that Americans shouldn't have to sacrifice their privacy for security. But the controversy around ID.me has somewhat eclipsed the broader and more concerning context of biometric identification technologies. Coverage of the IRS's announcement has in many cases not addressed the fact that millions of less advantaged individuals in the United States have already been forced to have their faces scanned by ID.me to access government services. ID.me has contracts with 10 federal agencies and has been verifying identities for the IRS's Child Tax Credit Update Portal since last year.

With tax season upon us, the IRS is pushing individuals to submit to facial recognition in exchange for being able to complete a range of basic tax-related activities online. The IRS has retained a private firm--ID.me The IRS is not the only government agency working with ID.me. The company claims to serve "27 states, multiple federal agencies, and over 500 name brand retailers." This is alarming for several reasons.