This post relates back to an older post of mine Fingerprint For Beer. If the pubs are taking your personal information & biometrics and storing it in a database without regulations what is to stop them from doing what is happening in Moscow with databases being sold like music CD's? Take a look at this video about databases being sold in Moscow which is extremely disturbing, I recommend the whole video but to see even their President's info on a database skip to 2:27 (at the time the president of Russia was Vladimir Putin)
What do you think about this? Does it change any of your opinions about allowing your biometrics to be scanned at a bar?
-Carlos
Feb 28, 2011
Feb 23, 2011
Your Face Sells You Out
I found a blog that is quite interesting and brings up some great points on Biomerics. The blog is called Traceless Biometrics Technology and unfortunately they have comments disabled. However the blog is great you should check it out if you have the chance.
Their lead article brought up a very interesting point: Biometrics as advertisement material. I had actually not thought about Biometrics in that fashion, always thinking they were more used for things like security and authentication.
Their lead article brought up a very interesting point: Biometrics as advertisement material. I had actually not thought about Biometrics in that fashion, always thinking they were more used for things like security and authentication.
More after the Break
Feb 14, 2011
Wiskers Scan
Have you ever been chased by a polar bear and wondered how you could identify this specific bear from all others for accusation purposes? Me neither.
Although it turns out that polar bears can be easily identified by their whisker pattern. Every single polar bear out there has a unique whisker pattern similar to a human's fingerprint. This pattern can be used to identify and distinguish different bears (if you can get a good picture). This distinction is exactly what researchers at the University of Manitoba are trying to exploit. They are calling for submissions from the public to build up their polar bear database (so far they have 16 bears categorized). Of course the average Joe doesn't have pictures of a polar bear up close (especially in the required orientation). But if you happen to have some pictures of polar bears lying around, head on over to the Polar Bear Photo-Identification Library and submit them.
So you may be asking yourself what does this have to do with Biometrics? I just found it very interesting that humans are not the only animals that Biometrics could be applied to and thought that you would want to know about a program using basically Biometrics on polar bears.
-Carlos
Although it turns out that polar bears can be easily identified by their whisker pattern. Every single polar bear out there has a unique whisker pattern similar to a human's fingerprint. This pattern can be used to identify and distinguish different bears (if you can get a good picture). This distinction is exactly what researchers at the University of Manitoba are trying to exploit. They are calling for submissions from the public to build up their polar bear database (so far they have 16 bears categorized). Of course the average Joe doesn't have pictures of a polar bear up close (especially in the required orientation). But if you happen to have some pictures of polar bears lying around, head on over to the Polar Bear Photo-Identification Library and submit them.
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| Anchor Points for whisker spot detection |
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| Extracted whisker spots for algorithm. |
So you may be asking yourself what does this have to do with Biometrics? I just found it very interesting that humans are not the only animals that Biometrics could be applied to and thought that you would want to know about a program using basically Biometrics on polar bears.
-Carlos
Feb 8, 2011
Fingerprint For Beer
I found a great blog with lots of posts about the newest biometric technologies, uses and such. The site is called ThirdFactor and is actually pretty interesting if you want to check it out.
I was reading this blog and I came across some troubling news. Recently in Australia pubs (bars) have begun collecting biometric data at their entrance in order to keep out troublemakers. The pubs have begun to scan fingerprints, take digital photographs, and scan IDs of their customers before letting them in.
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| Coogee Bay Hotel where patrons must accept a biometric scan to be allowed entrance into the pub/club. |
Feb 7, 2011
National Emergency
The following video represents what Biometrics should NOT become. Which brings me to a question , how much security is too much? Would you appreciate having to take down your pants to access your work?
By the way, most of this technology does not actually exist, the only one that does exist is the hand scanner.
-Carlos
By the way, most of this technology does not actually exist, the only one that does exist is the hand scanner.
-Carlos
Feb 2, 2011
Internal Critique and First Evaluation
In this post of my blog I try to express what I think about my blog and its purpose and such in hopes that having to formulate the thoughts will help me improve the blog. One more thing I should mention is that this blog was created as an assignment for my Communicating Science class, so some posts might not be directly related to biometrics.
Hear Me Out
The deficit model for science communication is one that has been around probably as long as science. It is hard to put a specific date on it's creation as no one given individual or organization created it, the model just came in to existence. Today the deficit model is regarded as inefficient and ineffective and the general consensus is that science communication should be done in an open discussion method (Phillips et al 2000), however is this truly the case?
Before I go on to answer the above proposed question let me step back and provide a little background. The deficit model for science communication like I mentioned has been around forever. This model assumes that the “public” is ignorant about science but would readily accept it if they knew more about it. It then becomes the responsibility of scientists to educate the ignorant masses and effectively pour knowledge into their brains. This approach basically assumes that to know science is to love science.
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