[Evangelist]

Cell phones that can identify you by how you walk. Fingerprint scanners that work from 25 feet away. Radars that pick up your heartbeat from behind concrete walls. Algorithms that can tell identical twins apart. Eyebrows and earlobes that give you away. A new generation of technologies is emerging that can identify you by your physiology. And unlike the old crop of biometric systems, you don't need to be right up close to the scanner in order to be identified. If they work as advertised, they may be able to identify you without you ever knowing you've been spotted.

Biometrics had a boom after 9/11. Gobs of government money poured into face and iris recognition systems; the Pentagon alone spent nearly $3 billion in five years, and the Defense Department was only one of many federal agencies funneling cash in the technologies. Civil libertarians feared the worst as face-spotters were turned on crowds of citizens in the hopes of catching a single crook.

But while the technologies proved helpful in verifying identities at entry points from Iraq to international airports, the hype -- or panic -- surrounding biometrics never quite panned out. Even after all that investment, scanners still aren't particularly good at finding a particular face in the crowd, for example; variable lighting conditions and angles (not to mention hats) continue to confound the systems.

Eventually, the biometrics market -- and the government enthusiasm for it -- cooled off. The technological development has not. Corporate and academic labs are continuing to find new ways to ID people with more accuracy, and from further away. Here are 11 projects.

Above:
The Ear

My, what noticeable ears you have. So noticeable in fact that researchers are exploring ways to detect the ears' features like they were fingerprints. In 2010, a group of British researchers used a process called "image ray transform" to shoot light rays at human ears, and then repeat an algorithm to draw an image of the tubular-shaped parts of the organ. The curved edges around the rim of the ear is a characteristic -- and most obvious -- example. Then, the researchers converted the images into a series of numbers marking the image as your own. Finally, it's just a matter of a machine scanning your ears again, and matching it up to what's already stored in the system, which the researchers were able to do accurately 99.6 percent of the time. In March of 2012, a pair of New Delhi scientists also tried scanning ears using Gabor filters -- a kind of digital image processor similar to human vision -- but were accurate to a mere 92 to 96.9 percent, according to a recent survey (pdf) of ear biometric research.

It may even be possible to develop ear-scanning in a way that makes it more reliable than fingerprints. The reason is because your fingerprints can callous over when doing a lot of hard work. But ears, by and large, don't change much over the course of a lifespan. There's a debate around this, however, and fingerprinting has a much longer and established history behind it. A big question is whether ear-scanning will work given different amounts of light, or when covered (even partially) by hair or jewelry. But if ear-scanners get to the point of being practical, then they could possibly work alongside fingerprinting instead of replacing them. Maybe in the future we'll see more extreme ear modification come along as a counter-measure.


Odor

In the early and mid-2000s, the Pentagon's blue-sky researchers at Darpa dabbled in something called the "Unique Signature Detection Project," which sought to explore ways to detect people by their scent, and maybe even spot and identify individuals based on their distinct smells. Darpa's work ended in 2008. The following year, the Department of Homeland Security fielded a solicitation for research in ways that human scent can indicate whether someone "might be engaging in deception," specifically at airports and other ports of entry.

Odor detection is still just a research project at the moment. The science is intricate, involving more than 300 chemical compounds that produce human odor. Our personal stinks can change depending on everything from what we eat to our environment. But it may be possible to distinguish our "primary odor" -- separate from "secondary" odors based on our diet and "tertiary" odors based on things like soaps and shampoos. The primary odor is the one linked to our genetics, and there have already been experiments with mice, which have been found to produce distinct scents unique to individuals. In 2007, the government's counter-terror Technical Support Working Group even started a program aimed at collecting and storing human odors for the military's dog handlers. Dogs, of course, have been used to track people by smell for decades, and are believed to distinguish between humans based on our genetic markers.


Heartbeat

Your chest moves, just a little, every time your heart beats or your lungs take in air. For years, researchers have been monkeying with radars that are sensitive enough to to detect those minuscule chest movements -- but powerful enough to do it from hundreds of yards away. Even reinforced concrete walls and electromagnetic shielding won't stop these radars, or so claim the researchers at the small, Arizona-based defense contractor VAWD Engineering, who are working on such a system for Darpa's "Biometrics-at-a-distance" program.

The key is the Doppler Effect -- the changes in frequency when one object moves relative to another. We hear it all the time, when a fire engine passes by, siren blaring. VAWD says their vehicle-mounted Sense Through Obstruction Remote Monitoring System (STORMS) can pick up even small fluctuations of chests.

STORM (pictured above) "can be used to detect, classify and identify the specific cardiac and pulmonary modulations of a... person of interest," a company document boasts. By itself, a heartbeat or a breathing rate won't serve as a definitive biometric. But combine it with soft biometrics (how someone subtly sways when he or she stands) and you've got a unique signature for that person that can't be hidden or covered up.

VAWD says these signature will help improve disaster relief and medical care by providing a "reliable, real time medical status equal to or better than the current devices, while increasing the mobility and comfort of the patient."

But the company also notes that its system performs "automated human life-form target tracking" even when construction materials like "Afghan mud-huts" are in the way. STORM "has already been deployed by the United States Army on one of its most advanced ground vehicles," the company adds.

Does any of that sound like hospital work to you?

More here: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/01/biometrics/

[Chieftain]

Well, it's certainly very interesting and amazing.

I guess it could help, sounds a bit creepy knowing the government can use all of this to basically invade your identity, though.

[Evangelist]

Yeah man. That's why I posted it. People need to be informed.