9
9-21
Guest
Mark of the Beast Stories
Mark of the Beast Technology (Rev 13:16-18)
RESTAURANTS TEST TABLE CARD READERS
July 8, 2007
By Greg Bluestein
ALPHARETTA, Ga. (AP) - It's become routine for customers to swipe their
credit or debit cards at consoles in fast-food joints, gas stations and
grocery stores. So why do we still hand over the plastic at sit-down
restaurants?
Pay-at-the-table systems are popular in Europe and other parts of the world,
but they haven't yet caught on in the U.S., largely because equipment makers
haven't been able to point to a reason why restaurateurs should invest in
the gear.
Manufacturers now see an opportunity. A rise in the number of "skimming"
scams in which waiters use hand-held computers to quietly record customers'
credit card information and sell it is creating a sense of urgency. So is an
increased push by managers to speed the flow of diners during peak hours.
"Restaurants are the last holdout where you still give up your credit card.
That's why we think this is the next logical step," said Paul Rasori,
VeriFone Inc.'s vice president of marketing.
Verifone's system, called the VX-670, is about the size of thick remote
control and sports a square LCD screen and a numerical keypad. It accepts
debit and credit cards and can automatically add the tip.
Once the customer swipes a card, the information is sent wirelessly to a
computer in the restaurant. A tiny printer spits out a receipt.
The Blade, a competitor from rival Hypercom Corp. (HYC), is a sleek,
hand-held unit. But it also sports a touch screen that can double as a menu
and an optional contactless reader that lets customers wave their cards
instead of swiping them.
Both companies are betting restaurants will be more willing to buy the
systems - which can cost several hundred dollars - as security threats
increase.
Some studies suggest as much as 70 percent of all cases of credit-card
skimming stem from restaurant scams. A 2005 report by Fair Isaac, the
fraud-detection specialist, detailed how handheld skimming devices could
take seconds to transmit data wirelessly to a fraudster and advised
merchants to use table-side devices so cards are always in a customer's
hand.
The pay-at-the-table manufacturers say there's another benefit: greater
productivity.
"If we can tell them they can increase table turns on peak hours by 1 to 4
percent, what's that worth to businesses?" said Scott Goldthwaite, vice
president of Hypercom's global business development.
But the potential market for the systems in North America - estimated to be
as large as $438 million - has been slow to take off.
It's partly because manufacturers haven't completely meshed their systems
with cash registers and other hardware developed by restaurant management
companies. But it's also because many manufacturers have to better sell the
benefits, said George Peabody, director of emerging technologies advisory
services at the Mercator Advisory Group.
"They've got to prove a real market need, and it's got to be really clear,"
Peabody said.
Neither Verifone nor Hypercom _would reveal the price of the units, but both
have launched tests in U.S. markets to gauge how the American diner reacts.
Both companies specialize in secure electronic payment devices. Hypercom
sells devices in Europe, China and Latin America. Verifone sells in Europe,
Israel and Southeast Asia.
At Ray's Killer Creek, an upscale steakhouse in the north Atlanta suburb of
Alpharetta, the VeriFone system didn't take long to catch on.
Jim Wahlstrom, the restaurant's operating partner, spent roughly 10 minutes
on briefing his waiters about the technology.
"We're all used to grocery stores and ATM machines," Wahlstrom said. "We all
operate with our credit cards and debit cards in our daily lives."
As the happy-hour crowd filed into the restaurant on a recent weekday
afternoon, many seemed unfazed by the new way to pay.
Wayne Smith and two friends had just scarfed down three steaks and were
waiting for the $191 bill when his waiter plopped down the machine. He
scanned his card, touched the square denoting a 20 percent tip and waited
for his receipt.
"I feel a little like I'm at Wal-Mart," he said.
-------------------
SPECIAL INK TO MARK LIVESTOCK IS IN TRIAL STAGE
By Repps Hudson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
07/13/2007
If you have ever tried to sort 1,100-pound steers and heifers running toward
you in a stockyard alley, you might appreciate the efforts of Ramos Mays and
Mark C. Pydynowski.
Ditto, if you're worried about the health of animals that provide food for
your table.
Mays and Pydynowski are the 20-something founders of Somark Innovations
Inc., a startup housed in about 300 square feet in the Center for Emerging
Technologies at 4041 Forest Park Avenue.
The company's name, by the way, comes from reversing Mays' first name and
adding a "k," which also covers Pydynowski's first name as well as their
business concept.
The radio-frequency identification product Mays and Pydynowski hope to bring
to market will allow producers of cattle, sheep, goats, hogs and other
hair-bearing livestock (but not poultry) to mark, identify and track their
animals with an ink tattoo.
It's a form of nanotechnology, using the molecular structure of an ink
approved by the Food and Drug Administration to identify livestock.
In an era when disease could wipe out herds quickly and curse U.S. livestock
in domestic and international markets, being able to show an animal's
history could be a smart marketing ploy whose time has come.
In Missouri, for instance, 68,000 cattle producers own and breed 2 million
cows and sell their calves to be fed until slaughter. The Missouri
Cattlemen's Association said the beef cattle business in the state generates
$1.5 billion a year.
The Agriculture Department has backed away from a mandatory identification
system, preferring to allow producers to mark their livestock voluntarily as
a way to give their animals higher value in the marketplace.
The permanent imprint beneath the surface of the hide - in cattle it will be
placed on the back in front of the tail - can be read by an electronic
scanner or panel reader connected to a database. That database would contain
key facts about each animal - date of birth, type of animal, its movement
from owner to owner and its vaccination and health records.
"We use a reader that hangs above the animals," said Mays, who was reared on
a 200-acre cow-calf farm near Ash Grove, Mo., in Greene County.
Mays believes his farm background, coupled with his major in computer
science at Washington University and his postgraduate work in
condensed-matter physics, gave him the knowledge and insights to come up
with the idea of a nonmetallic way to mark livestock. He and Pydynowski, who
grew up on the south side of Chicago, met in college.
Present ways of marking cattle include branding with a hot iron, which can
hurt and cause stress to cattle and damage the hide; ear marking with
electronic plastic or metal clips, which can fall off; and microchips
implanted under the hide, which can be too costly for producers.
"We're looking at cost, retention and performance - the read rates and what
we call the speed of commerce compatibility," said Mays. "We want to be able
to read five (head of cattle) side by side at the same time. We want to be
able to read 12,000 a day at a stockyard."
Present systems read the ear tags, but not as quickly - or at all if a tag
has fallen off.
The two entrepreneurs have raised nearly $2 million, including about
$500,000 from St. Louis Arch Angels, a group of local investors.
"A lot of our members found it to be a very interesting concept," said Gil
Bickel, head of Arch Angels. "Initially, it's for cattle, but the RFID
concept applies to a lot of other uses. It would be usable for any business
that wants to keep track of its products."
Mays said the ink is being tested now in a herd in Massachusetts. Bickel
said the testing includes determining at what distance the ink on an
animal's back can be read. Mays and Pydynowski will not say when they expect
to introduce their product to the market.
Cost of applying the ink will be a major issue in commercialization. Mays
said the target cost is $1 a head. Today, the cost to tag the ears of
animals with RFID information runs between $3 and $4 a head, said Jeff
Windett, executive vice president of the cattlemen's group.
He said the new animal ID system would have to be accepted by livestock
producers like those found throughout Missouri.
"We welcome new technology that can tell us about the source and age of the
animal," Windett said.
--------------
CHIPS: HIGH TECH AIDS OR TRACKING TOOLS?
Jul 22, 2007
By Todd Lewan
CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little
notice itself - until a year ago, when two of its employees had
glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their
forearms.
The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs - radio frequency identification
tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick - was merely a
way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for
police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance
codes, the company said.
"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques,"
Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He
compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. "There's a reader
outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it
opens the door."
Innocuous? Maybe.
But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with
electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the
proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability
to erode privacy in the digital age.
To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention - a high-tech helper that
could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help
authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to buy
their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.
To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from
centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and
do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming someone
else.
Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer's patients or Army
Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees, then
sex offenders, then illegal aliens - until one day, a majority of Americans,
falling into one category or another, would find themselves electronically
tagged.
The concept of making all things traceable isn't alien to Americans. Thirty
years ago, the first electronic tags were fixed to the ears of cattle, to
permit ranchers to track a herd's reproductive and eating habits. In the
1990s, millions of chips were implanted in livestock, fish, dogs, cats, even
racehorses.
Microchips are now fixed to car windshields as toll-paying devices, on
"contactless" payment cards (Chase's "Blink," or MasterCard's "PayPass").
They're embedded in Michelin tires, library books, passports, work uniforms,
luggage, and, unbeknownst to many consumers, on a host of individual items,
from Hewlett Packard printers to Sanyo TVs, at Wal-Mart and Best Buy.
But CityWatcher.com employees weren't appliances or pets: They were people
made scannable.
"It was scary that a government contractor that specialized in putting
surveillance cameras on city streets was the first to incorporate this
technology in the workplace," says Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips: How
Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID."
Darks, the CityWatcher.com executive, dismissed his critics, noting that he
and his employees had volunteered to be chip-injected. Any suggestion that a
sinister, Big-Brother-like campaign was afoot, he said, was hogwash.
"You would think that we were going around putting chips in people by
force," he told a reporter, "and that's not the case at all."
Yet, within days of the company's announcement, civil libertarians and
Christian conservatives joined to excoriate the microchip's implantation in
people.
RFID, they warned, would soon enable the government to "frisk" citizens
electronically - an invisible, undetectable search performed by readers
posted at "hotspots" along roadsides and in pedestrian areas. It might even
be used to squeal on employees while they worked; time spent at the water
cooler, in the bathroom, in a designated smoking area could one day be
broadcast, recorded and compiled in off-limits, company databases.
"Ultimately," says Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who specializes in
consumer education and RFID technology, "the fear is that the government or
your employer might someday say, 'Take a chip or starve.'"
Some Christian critics saw the implants as the fulfillment of a biblical
prophecy that describes an age of evil in which humans are forced to take
the "Mark of the Beast" on their bodies, to buy or sell anything.
Gary Wohlscheid, president of These Last Days Ministries, a Roman Catholic
group in Lowell, Mich., put together a Web site that linked the implantable
microchips to the apocalyptic prophecy in the book of Revelation.
"The Bible tells us that God's wrath will come to those who take the Mark of
the Beast," he says. Those who refuse to accept the Satanic chip "will be
saved," Wohlscheid offers in a comforting tone.
---------------
EU PROJECT BUILDS EUROPEAN INFRASTRUCTURE
FOR TESTING BIOMETRICS TECHNOLOGIES
August 13, 2007
An EU-funded project has begun work on setting up a European infrastructure
for the testing and certification of biometrics components and systems.
Biometric recognition systems measure the behavioural or physical traits of
people. These can be as varied as iris images, fingerprints, the structure
of veins in the hand, or even an individual's typing rhythm.
The systems are currently used by national governments for border controls,
and the EU is looking to develop a coherent approach for Europe. The
technology is used to detect illegal immigration, and to identity theft and
security threats.
The BioTesting Europe project is seeking to establish European
interoperability for large-scale cross-national identity management systems,
such as passports, visas and ID cards.
The project will also help to establish European centres for the testing and
certification of these biometric components and systems.
'In order to establish European interoperability within large identity
management systems, more specific requirements for designing testing and
evaluation schemes are needed,' explains Max Snijder, the project
coordinator from the European Biometrics Forum. 'An integrated and European
approach is the absolute success factor in achieving these goals. That means
simultaneous actions are needed that facilitate alignment between all levels
of stakeholders that are involved: end users, testing laboratories,
accreditation organisations and industry.'
The project has begun outlining the need for testing and certification
schemes, and will then make an inventory of existing capabilities, mapping
user requirements and defining the business case.
Ultimately, the project will establish a European Biometric Testing and
Certification Roadmap for further research and development.
BioTesting Europe is funded under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme under
its 'preparatory action for security research' theme. It is being
coordinated by the European Biometric Forum, and involves the UK's National
Physical Laboratory, Germany's Fraunhofer-Institut f
Mark of the Beast Technology (Rev 13:16-18)
RESTAURANTS TEST TABLE CARD READERS
July 8, 2007
By Greg Bluestein
ALPHARETTA, Ga. (AP) - It's become routine for customers to swipe their
credit or debit cards at consoles in fast-food joints, gas stations and
grocery stores. So why do we still hand over the plastic at sit-down
restaurants?
Pay-at-the-table systems are popular in Europe and other parts of the world,
but they haven't yet caught on in the U.S., largely because equipment makers
haven't been able to point to a reason why restaurateurs should invest in
the gear.
Manufacturers now see an opportunity. A rise in the number of "skimming"
scams in which waiters use hand-held computers to quietly record customers'
credit card information and sell it is creating a sense of urgency. So is an
increased push by managers to speed the flow of diners during peak hours.
"Restaurants are the last holdout where you still give up your credit card.
That's why we think this is the next logical step," said Paul Rasori,
VeriFone Inc.'s vice president of marketing.
Verifone's system, called the VX-670, is about the size of thick remote
control and sports a square LCD screen and a numerical keypad. It accepts
debit and credit cards and can automatically add the tip.
Once the customer swipes a card, the information is sent wirelessly to a
computer in the restaurant. A tiny printer spits out a receipt.
The Blade, a competitor from rival Hypercom Corp. (HYC), is a sleek,
hand-held unit. But it also sports a touch screen that can double as a menu
and an optional contactless reader that lets customers wave their cards
instead of swiping them.
Both companies are betting restaurants will be more willing to buy the
systems - which can cost several hundred dollars - as security threats
increase.
Some studies suggest as much as 70 percent of all cases of credit-card
skimming stem from restaurant scams. A 2005 report by Fair Isaac, the
fraud-detection specialist, detailed how handheld skimming devices could
take seconds to transmit data wirelessly to a fraudster and advised
merchants to use table-side devices so cards are always in a customer's
hand.
The pay-at-the-table manufacturers say there's another benefit: greater
productivity.
"If we can tell them they can increase table turns on peak hours by 1 to 4
percent, what's that worth to businesses?" said Scott Goldthwaite, vice
president of Hypercom's global business development.
But the potential market for the systems in North America - estimated to be
as large as $438 million - has been slow to take off.
It's partly because manufacturers haven't completely meshed their systems
with cash registers and other hardware developed by restaurant management
companies. But it's also because many manufacturers have to better sell the
benefits, said George Peabody, director of emerging technologies advisory
services at the Mercator Advisory Group.
"They've got to prove a real market need, and it's got to be really clear,"
Peabody said.
Neither Verifone nor Hypercom _would reveal the price of the units, but both
have launched tests in U.S. markets to gauge how the American diner reacts.
Both companies specialize in secure electronic payment devices. Hypercom
sells devices in Europe, China and Latin America. Verifone sells in Europe,
Israel and Southeast Asia.
At Ray's Killer Creek, an upscale steakhouse in the north Atlanta suburb of
Alpharetta, the VeriFone system didn't take long to catch on.
Jim Wahlstrom, the restaurant's operating partner, spent roughly 10 minutes
on briefing his waiters about the technology.
"We're all used to grocery stores and ATM machines," Wahlstrom said. "We all
operate with our credit cards and debit cards in our daily lives."
As the happy-hour crowd filed into the restaurant on a recent weekday
afternoon, many seemed unfazed by the new way to pay.
Wayne Smith and two friends had just scarfed down three steaks and were
waiting for the $191 bill when his waiter plopped down the machine. He
scanned his card, touched the square denoting a 20 percent tip and waited
for his receipt.
"I feel a little like I'm at Wal-Mart," he said.
-------------------
SPECIAL INK TO MARK LIVESTOCK IS IN TRIAL STAGE
By Repps Hudson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
07/13/2007
If you have ever tried to sort 1,100-pound steers and heifers running toward
you in a stockyard alley, you might appreciate the efforts of Ramos Mays and
Mark C. Pydynowski.
Ditto, if you're worried about the health of animals that provide food for
your table.
Mays and Pydynowski are the 20-something founders of Somark Innovations
Inc., a startup housed in about 300 square feet in the Center for Emerging
Technologies at 4041 Forest Park Avenue.
The company's name, by the way, comes from reversing Mays' first name and
adding a "k," which also covers Pydynowski's first name as well as their
business concept.
The radio-frequency identification product Mays and Pydynowski hope to bring
to market will allow producers of cattle, sheep, goats, hogs and other
hair-bearing livestock (but not poultry) to mark, identify and track their
animals with an ink tattoo.
It's a form of nanotechnology, using the molecular structure of an ink
approved by the Food and Drug Administration to identify livestock.
In an era when disease could wipe out herds quickly and curse U.S. livestock
in domestic and international markets, being able to show an animal's
history could be a smart marketing ploy whose time has come.
In Missouri, for instance, 68,000 cattle producers own and breed 2 million
cows and sell their calves to be fed until slaughter. The Missouri
Cattlemen's Association said the beef cattle business in the state generates
$1.5 billion a year.
The Agriculture Department has backed away from a mandatory identification
system, preferring to allow producers to mark their livestock voluntarily as
a way to give their animals higher value in the marketplace.
The permanent imprint beneath the surface of the hide - in cattle it will be
placed on the back in front of the tail - can be read by an electronic
scanner or panel reader connected to a database. That database would contain
key facts about each animal - date of birth, type of animal, its movement
from owner to owner and its vaccination and health records.
"We use a reader that hangs above the animals," said Mays, who was reared on
a 200-acre cow-calf farm near Ash Grove, Mo., in Greene County.
Mays believes his farm background, coupled with his major in computer
science at Washington University and his postgraduate work in
condensed-matter physics, gave him the knowledge and insights to come up
with the idea of a nonmetallic way to mark livestock. He and Pydynowski, who
grew up on the south side of Chicago, met in college.
Present ways of marking cattle include branding with a hot iron, which can
hurt and cause stress to cattle and damage the hide; ear marking with
electronic plastic or metal clips, which can fall off; and microchips
implanted under the hide, which can be too costly for producers.
"We're looking at cost, retention and performance - the read rates and what
we call the speed of commerce compatibility," said Mays. "We want to be able
to read five (head of cattle) side by side at the same time. We want to be
able to read 12,000 a day at a stockyard."
Present systems read the ear tags, but not as quickly - or at all if a tag
has fallen off.
The two entrepreneurs have raised nearly $2 million, including about
$500,000 from St. Louis Arch Angels, a group of local investors.
"A lot of our members found it to be a very interesting concept," said Gil
Bickel, head of Arch Angels. "Initially, it's for cattle, but the RFID
concept applies to a lot of other uses. It would be usable for any business
that wants to keep track of its products."
Mays said the ink is being tested now in a herd in Massachusetts. Bickel
said the testing includes determining at what distance the ink on an
animal's back can be read. Mays and Pydynowski will not say when they expect
to introduce their product to the market.
Cost of applying the ink will be a major issue in commercialization. Mays
said the target cost is $1 a head. Today, the cost to tag the ears of
animals with RFID information runs between $3 and $4 a head, said Jeff
Windett, executive vice president of the cattlemen's group.
He said the new animal ID system would have to be accepted by livestock
producers like those found throughout Missouri.
"We welcome new technology that can tell us about the source and age of the
animal," Windett said.
--------------
CHIPS: HIGH TECH AIDS OR TRACKING TOOLS?
Jul 22, 2007
By Todd Lewan
CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little
notice itself - until a year ago, when two of its employees had
glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their
forearms.
The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs - radio frequency identification
tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick - was merely a
way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for
police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance
codes, the company said.
"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques,"
Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He
compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. "There's a reader
outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it
opens the door."
Innocuous? Maybe.
But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with
electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the
proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability
to erode privacy in the digital age.
To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention - a high-tech helper that
could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help
authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to buy
their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.
To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from
centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and
do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming someone
else.
Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer's patients or Army
Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees, then
sex offenders, then illegal aliens - until one day, a majority of Americans,
falling into one category or another, would find themselves electronically
tagged.
The concept of making all things traceable isn't alien to Americans. Thirty
years ago, the first electronic tags were fixed to the ears of cattle, to
permit ranchers to track a herd's reproductive and eating habits. In the
1990s, millions of chips were implanted in livestock, fish, dogs, cats, even
racehorses.
Microchips are now fixed to car windshields as toll-paying devices, on
"contactless" payment cards (Chase's "Blink," or MasterCard's "PayPass").
They're embedded in Michelin tires, library books, passports, work uniforms,
luggage, and, unbeknownst to many consumers, on a host of individual items,
from Hewlett Packard printers to Sanyo TVs, at Wal-Mart and Best Buy.
But CityWatcher.com employees weren't appliances or pets: They were people
made scannable.
"It was scary that a government contractor that specialized in putting
surveillance cameras on city streets was the first to incorporate this
technology in the workplace," says Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips: How
Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID."
Darks, the CityWatcher.com executive, dismissed his critics, noting that he
and his employees had volunteered to be chip-injected. Any suggestion that a
sinister, Big-Brother-like campaign was afoot, he said, was hogwash.
"You would think that we were going around putting chips in people by
force," he told a reporter, "and that's not the case at all."
Yet, within days of the company's announcement, civil libertarians and
Christian conservatives joined to excoriate the microchip's implantation in
people.
RFID, they warned, would soon enable the government to "frisk" citizens
electronically - an invisible, undetectable search performed by readers
posted at "hotspots" along roadsides and in pedestrian areas. It might even
be used to squeal on employees while they worked; time spent at the water
cooler, in the bathroom, in a designated smoking area could one day be
broadcast, recorded and compiled in off-limits, company databases.
"Ultimately," says Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who specializes in
consumer education and RFID technology, "the fear is that the government or
your employer might someday say, 'Take a chip or starve.'"
Some Christian critics saw the implants as the fulfillment of a biblical
prophecy that describes an age of evil in which humans are forced to take
the "Mark of the Beast" on their bodies, to buy or sell anything.
Gary Wohlscheid, president of These Last Days Ministries, a Roman Catholic
group in Lowell, Mich., put together a Web site that linked the implantable
microchips to the apocalyptic prophecy in the book of Revelation.
"The Bible tells us that God's wrath will come to those who take the Mark of
the Beast," he says. Those who refuse to accept the Satanic chip "will be
saved," Wohlscheid offers in a comforting tone.
---------------
EU PROJECT BUILDS EUROPEAN INFRASTRUCTURE
FOR TESTING BIOMETRICS TECHNOLOGIES
August 13, 2007
An EU-funded project has begun work on setting up a European infrastructure
for the testing and certification of biometrics components and systems.
Biometric recognition systems measure the behavioural or physical traits of
people. These can be as varied as iris images, fingerprints, the structure
of veins in the hand, or even an individual's typing rhythm.
The systems are currently used by national governments for border controls,
and the EU is looking to develop a coherent approach for Europe. The
technology is used to detect illegal immigration, and to identity theft and
security threats.
The BioTesting Europe project is seeking to establish European
interoperability for large-scale cross-national identity management systems,
such as passports, visas and ID cards.
The project will also help to establish European centres for the testing and
certification of these biometric components and systems.
'In order to establish European interoperability within large identity
management systems, more specific requirements for designing testing and
evaluation schemes are needed,' explains Max Snijder, the project
coordinator from the European Biometrics Forum. 'An integrated and European
approach is the absolute success factor in achieving these goals. That means
simultaneous actions are needed that facilitate alignment between all levels
of stakeholders that are involved: end users, testing laboratories,
accreditation organisations and industry.'
The project has begun outlining the need for testing and certification
schemes, and will then make an inventory of existing capabilities, mapping
user requirements and defining the business case.
Ultimately, the project will establish a European Biometric Testing and
Certification Roadmap for further research and development.
BioTesting Europe is funded under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme under
its 'preparatory action for security research' theme. It is being
coordinated by the European Biometric Forum, and involves the UK's National
Physical Laboratory, Germany's Fraunhofer-Institut f