October 27 2008 / by John Heylin
Category: Security Year: 2010 Rating: 5 Hot
The UK police are implementing a new policy which has civil liberty groups in an uproar. Called Project Midas, it aims to put small Blackberry-like fingerprint scanners in the hands of police within the next two years. This will allow police to confirm the identity (7.5 million prints on record and climbing) of people they detain.
Officials claim that the fingerprint records will only be used for identification and all fingerprints obtained by the device will be erased. But after reading about the British bomb-sniffing laundromat I have my doubts.
In fact, the UK Police are notorious for invading the civil liberties of their people. With an estimated 1.5 million security cameras around London alone (along with a probable 4.2 million country-wide), it’s no wonder the British people are feeling a little perturbed.
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November 05 2008 / by John Heylin
Category: Gadgets Year: 2012 Rating: 2
AU Optronics Corp, one of the top three manufacturers of thin film Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), have developed a LCD screen which has the ability to take your fingerprint or monitor UV levels on the environment (the UV thing is kinda weird, they hope to market it to women worried about too much skin exposure to UV rays).
The LCD screen is able to scan a fingerprint due to the high amount of sensors built into the pixels themselves. “The LCD panel is mounted with optical sensors and a detection circuit. Each pixel is equipped with four sensors.” The high pixel to sensor ratio allows it to scan a fingerprint only a few seconds after a finger is placed on it.
The scariest issue about all of this is the fact that surfaces, which we thought were simple, are becoming even more complex. This is a huge issue when you consider biometric information (fingerprints, DNA, iris scan) can easily be gained by technology that used to just make thinner TVs possible. It makes you wonder how decades from now people are going to protect their identity when the technology around them records everything about them.
via TechOn!
