Voters display their permanent voters card during the 2019 Presidential and National Assembly elections in Lagos.
Adekunle Ajayi/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Logistical challenges facing the 2023 elections remain huge given the number of political parties, the security environment and the number of contestants at various levels.
Analyzing DNA can tell us what colour a person’s eyes are.
(Shutterstock)
Our DNA contains the information that determines the colour of our eyes.
A U.S. Army soldier scans the irises of an Afghan civilian in 2012 as part of an effort by the military to collect biometric information from much of the Afghan population.
Jose Cabezas/AFP via GettyImages
The potential failure of the US military to protect information that can identify Afghan citizens raises questions about whether and how biometric data should be collected in war zones.
Smart people can have really bad ideas – like selectively breeding human beings to improve the species. Put into practice, Galton’s concept proved discriminatory, damaging, even deadly.
Even identical twins have different fingerprints.
El Greco/Shutterstock.com
Sarah Leupen, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
You’ve had your own personal set of fingerprints since before you were born, and they’ll be with you throughout your whole life.
Even though passcode options include swipe patterns and long passwords, many users still use easy 4-digit PINs. This is because people are often lulled into a false sense of security when they use fingerprint login.
SHUTTERSTOCK
While the data from a fingerprint is very hard to retrieve, cybercriminals can get around biometric technology in various ways. And having a weak passcode is like giving them a hall pass.
Current techniques to protect biometric details, such as face recognition or fingerprints, from hacking are effective, but advances in AI are rendering these protections obsolete.
Fingerprinting is a valuable police tool for tracking down suspects, but it’s not perfect. However, we can reduce the risk of any mistaken identity if we work within the limits of fingerprinting.
Is this worth the tape it’s wrapped with?
Bill Selak
Is forensic science an oxymoron? A new White House report suggests there are major issues with many of the forensic disciplines used to convict defendants of crimes in the U.S.
The ancient Egyptians knew a thing or two about how to produce a vibrant blue pigment for their tombs and coffins. Now it’s being used to help find fingerprints.
President Obama’s call for better electronic gun-safety systems put a spotlight on the technologies currently in the R&D pipeline that aim to make sure only authorized users can fire a gun.
We don’t need any more internet off-switches, thanks.
deadhorse
Prime Minister David Cameron has stated that the UK government will look at “switching off” some forms of encryption in order to make society safer from terror attacks. This might make a grand statement…
Keys at your fingertips, but the technology isn’t there yet.
Rachmaninoff
How can we ensure that someone is who they say they are? How can be sure that the person in our system, both digitally speaking or physically in front of us, is who whom they claim to be? You may think…