ACLU Yanks Congress' Chain About Amazon's Face Recognition

The ACLU did an experiment comparing a criminal watch list to members of Congress. The results got a lot of press but actually weren’t at all surprising.

Identity MattersAlex KilpatrickAugust 13, 2018Face Recognition, biometric accuracy

Security versus Security Theater

In general, people are terrible at assessing risk. We intuitively associate familiar with safe and unfamiliar with dangerous. When bad things happen, we want someone to do something, even if it’s not helpful. This generally isn’t a good thing.

Identity MattersMary HaskettJuly 9, 2018security

Accuracy of Police Face Recognition Systems

There have been a bunch of articles published recently about the terrible accuracy of facial recognition technology used by the police. This sounds really bad, but to understand it, you have to understand accuracy in biometrics.

Identity MattersMary HaskettJuly 2, 2018Face Recognition, biometric accuracy

Marbles and Probability

A recent blog post mentioned that the Android and Apple phone specifications call for at least a 1 in 50,000 probability of a false match. In other words, a randomly selected imposter will have a 1 in 50,000 chance of unlocking your phone with his fingerprint. Let’s visualize that.

Identity MattersAlex KilpatrickJune 8, 2018Biometric Accuracy

The Economics of Identity

When people, companies, or organizations make a choice about a particular identity mechanism, they are making an economic decision. Every mechanism has a cost - and these costs should be balanced. A perfect identity system will have so much friction that it will allow no customers and a frictionless identity system will allow plenty of customers, but unlimited fraud.

Identity MattersAlex KilpatrickJune 5, 2018Biometric Identification, Identity

The Wonders of Human Face Recognition

Humans are remarkably better at face recognition tasks than computers. We are so good at recognizing faces, that we don’t even realize it’s a difficult task.

Identity MattersAlex KilpatrickApril 2, 2018Biometric Identification, Face Recognition

Identity Primer: Biometrics 101 Video

Our co-founder Dr. Alex Kilpatrick has a lot of experience working with biometrics. The various modalities of biometrics (face, iris and fingerprint are the most common) have different applications. This video is a broad overview of the three most popular biometric modalities and common misconceptions about them.

Will Sunglasses Protect You From Face Recognition?

Will $240 sunglasses protect you from face recognition? Maybe, but there are easier (and less expensive) ways to do it.

Identity MattersAlex KilpatrickMarch 26, 2018Privacy, Face Recognition

Identity Primer: Privacy (The Tor Browser)

Identity MattersAlex KilpatrickMarch 22, 2018Identity Primer, Privacy

Identity Primer: What is Face Recognition?

Face matching is the easiest biometric for humans to identify with because we have done it literally from birth. And for the most part we are much better at it than computers - we can recognize faces with very little information, especially if they are familiar.

Identity MattersAlex KilpatrickMarch 19, 2018Biometric Identification, Face Recognition