Biometrically Identifiable Gesture Technology

If you believe fingerprinting or picture ID’s are invasive forms of technology, wait until you read this.

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
July 20, 2011

If you have never seen the documentary Shadow Government, I honestly recommend it. It details the latest information regarding the use of technology to create a global identification system of biblical proportions. In this system that is being built as we wonder “why I have to give my fingerprint to obtain a driver’s license”, every single human being will be accounted for; no exceptions.

The variety of technologies available to effectively identify anyone at work, at the gym, at public events, in Court houses and even at home, is simply mind blowing. However, the producers and buyers of these so-called security enhancing tools do not stop thinking about new ways to get the highest paid contracts from private companies or the government.

The latest example of invasive identification technology is Biometric Signature ID, Inc’s BioSig-ID. According to the manufacturer’s description, BioSig-ID is a “Multi-Factor Identity Proofing Technology”; the best of its kind. This earned the company the trust of a variety of organizations going from sectors such as healthcare, the financial and banking systems, online education, cloud computing, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.

The BioSig-ID is known for its capacity to gather information such as mouse movement patterns, typing speeds, user gestures, and other personal characteristics to fully identify the person who intends to access information or use a piece of equipment.

Biometric Signature ID announced recently it received approval from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for its latest patent which will be added to the large collection of technology-based identification tools it produces. The BioSig-ID technology collects movements made with various devices such as a mouse, touchscreen markings, fingers and body movements to create a biometric multi-factor password used for identification purposes.

Convenience is the name of the Game

As it often happens, the use of BioSig-ID as well as other invasive technologies, is presented not as a threat to personal privacy, but as a “convenient way to stay safe” or to keep data and information safe. In other examples of privacy violations we encounter the entertainment industry which managed to create products such as video game consoles that record the users movements as a biometric human fingerprint. Kinect, the device that is inside Microsoft’s XBox, allows users to play by just moving their bodies. “The console detects movement and recognizes people through a camera and various sensors installed on the device.” Isn’t that convenient?

Along with video gaming are the infamous full body scanners, which are supposed to keep us all safe from terrorism, but that instead are one of the most invasive forms of technology ever created. The scanners not only render full naked images of the passengers that allow their privacy to be violated -there is an opt out chance- but also bathes them with poisonous doses of radiation. See information on the scanners’ radiation amounts here. Read about full body scanner backscatter radiation here. Learn about radiation flux here.

Creating a need for invasive identification technologies

The amount of biometric-based identification technology production and consumption has increased exponentially in the last decade or so. This does not mean, however, that the use of these technology is so young. Military and technology contractors have been working on ways to fully identify individuals for a long time. In most cases, technology such as the one developed by Biometric Signature ID has been used in highly sensitive places in companies and military installations.

The success of this technology relies on the fact that a market was created -as it happens with many products- to assure its adoption. The evil part is that people’s fear and government policy are also used to push the production and sale of biometric identification. By the time consumers get to know about its existence, it has already been tried and tested for many years. In the case of BioSig-ID, the product was tested initially by The Tolly Group.

As we cited before, many organizations and companies adopt this kind of technologies under the safety excuse. Data safety, information safety, access to premisses safety, web access safety and so on. In the healthcare business, for example, the DEA requires electronic prescription of controlled substances, another failure of the infamous war on drugs. DEA uses this technology to authenticate access to patients’ records.

In the banking and financial markets, both private institutions and government offices use biometric identification to “bring security and safeguard customer information, reduce fraud, etc. It has not worked very well, though, as millions of customer credit card information has been stolen from those very same institutions and neither the hackers nor the banks have been held accountable for endangering the privacy of their customers.

Education has not escaped privacy violation. Both physical and online educational organizations adopted biometric and other invasive identification technologies to “guarantee” the correct accreditation of students as well as for registration and payment controls. Universities and other learning online-based institutions offer classes online which require signing in with more than one fingerprint.

New internet-based services such as Mobile and Cloud computing will pile on the number of consumers and users of Bi0Sig-ID and similar validation tools. As all content migrates to the “Cloud” and the corporations and the government become more empowered by centrally controlling information and how people access it from work or home, biometric identification systems will be key to mandate certified entrance to those “Clouds”. The idea to have a unique internet ID, as it has been proposed by government officials in several countries is suddenly appearing more and more realistic.

And if you are a government employee, as many are nowadays, and more will be in the near future, get ready to give every single piece of information your body emits. In Mexico,  all federal government employees had to submit to biometric identification recognition in order to keep their jobs. All over the world, government implement security protocols that include the use of Government Identity Cards or Credentials to access and manage information.

E-IDs are already available in countries like Hong Kong, Malaysia, Estonia, Finland, Belgium, Portugal, Morocco and Spain.