Biometrics

A two-part article by Usha Ramanathan in the magazine, Moneylife, notes plans by the Nilekani-led UIDAI to possibly allow access to the UID database to private companies. It poses the question of who exactly owns the Aadhar data.

Nasscom has posted an interesting interview with Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, who talks about the status of the program and some of the imminent changes that we are likely to see in the next few years as a result of Aadhar.

About a month ago, there was a report on potential issues with iris scans. This week's Frontline contends that fingerprints are not infallible either and the related ramifications for the UID/Aadhar project. It also mentions that Nilekani has publicly stated that iris scans are "not a mature technology" and has questioned its accuracy.

An article in Nature points at research claiming that human irises are not constant over time and instead change appreciably as we age. In a paper by Kevin Bowyer and Samuel Fenker, they assert that there is a noticeable change between iris scans taken only three years apart.

TeNet has developed a low-cost ATM featuring a fingerprint identification system specifically targeting users in rural India.

Grammteller, unlike other ATMs is meant to be a cash dispenser, which plugs into a kiosk PC, which acts as a tunnel between the dispenser and the bank server thus bypassing use of the 'switch' used by ATMs. The 'financial transaction switch' is an enterprise server that connects the ATM to information from various sources, which then dispenses with the switch, thus reducing the cost of the machine to about Rs. 50, 000. The server is encrypted and runs on a proprietary format developed at IIT-M.

The ATMs are being tested in Chennai at the moment.

Full story: CIOL