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Brazil’s infant.id Sees Bump in Biometric Birth Registration, National Rollout Expected
Infant.ID has surpassed 10,000 infant biometric registrations in Brazil’s state of Mato Grosso as the company prepares for the establishment of national regulations for infant IDs. The Akiyama subsidiary began researching infant biometrics in 2013, leading to the development of a platform for collecting high-definition fingerprint biometrics from children between birth and five years old for transmission to public authorities.
The company operated as Natosafe before rebranding as Infant.ID. Infant.ID notes that its scanner can collect fingerprints, palm prints and footprints from newborns and fingerprints from mothers. The scanner can be easily used by a single person, including capturing data from premature newborns in incubators, the company says.
The company presented an upgraded version of its biometric scanner at Brazil’s Digital Citizenship Congress last September, soon after a research project showed that fingerprint biometrics captured with Infant.ID’s scanner could generate templates and be deduplicated.
Trump Orders Government to Stop ‘Trampling’ Conservatives on Social Media
President Donald Trump has ordered his attorney general to investigate how the previous administration “trampled free speech rights” by seeking to combat misinformation on social media platforms.
The directive, which came amid a flurry of executive orders on Trump’s first day in office, forbids government agencies and employees from abridging freedom of speech — something already prohibited by the First Amendment — and says the federal government should “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the federal government related to censorship of protected speech.”
It is the latest sign that restrictions around online misinformation are likely to evaporate for the next four years as the new administration crusades against perceived anti-conservative bias on social media and tech executives cozy up to a president who has threatened to throw at least one of them — Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg — in jail for life.
Donald Trump Promises New Paychecks to Some Americans: Here’s Who’s Impacted
As President Donald Trump began his second term in the White House on Monday, he reiterated his promise to provide a group of Americans with back pay to make up for military expulsions related to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
During the pandemic, roughly 8,400 troops were expelled from the military after refusing the vaccine. Marines saw an especially high number, with 3,700 expulsions. While some were able to get exemptions based on medical or religious reasons, many who were in otherwise good standing saw themselves dismissed from the military for their choice.
“This week, I will reinstate any service members who were unjustly expelled from our military for objecting to the COVID vaccine mandate with full back pay,” Trump said during his swearing-in ceremony Monday. The vaccine mandate lasted from Aug. 2021 to Jan. 2023.
FTC, Texas AG Take Action Against Surveillance, Sale of Drivers’ Data
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken a significant step toward safeguarding consumer privacy by initiating a proposed action against General Motors, or GM, and its subsidiary, OnStar, over allegations they improperly collected and shared sensitive data on millions of vehicle owners.
Several days earlier, Texas Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton sued Allstate and its subsidiary, Arity, for “unlawfully collecting, using, and selling” more than 45 million Americans’ driving data “through secretly embedded software in mobile apps such as Life360.” The suit arose from an investigation that led Paxton to sue GM in August for allegedly “false, deceptive, and misleading business practices related to its unlawful collection and sale of over 1.5 million Texans’ private driving data to insurance companies without their knowledge or consent.”
This is the first enforcement action filed by a state attorney general to enforce a comprehensive data privacy law. Both the FTC and the Texas AG’s actions reflect growing concerns about privacy risks in the era of digitally connected vehicles. Indeed. In Dec. 2024, a significant data breach at Volkswagen Group’s software subsidiary, Cariad, exposed sensitive information of approximately 800,000 electric vehicle owners.
The compromised data included precise vehicle locations, contact details, and movement patterns. The breach affected fully electric models across Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, and Škoda brands, impacting vehicles not only in Germany but throughout Europe and other regions.
Digital Passports Among IDs to Be Available in UK Government App
U.K. citizens could soon be able to carry their passports in a digital wallet on their phones along with their driving license, universal credit account and marriage and birth certificates.
The plan was announced by Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, as part of a new smartphone app to simplify interactions with government services. He said it meant “the overflowing drawer rammed with letters from the government and hours spent on hold to get a basic appointment will soon be consigned to history.”
The first government-issued credentials that people will be able to carry in the new digital wallet, to launch in June, will be a driving license and a veteran card. The government’s digital service plans to then roll out access to accounts relating to student loans, vehicle tax, benefits, childcare and local councils.
Problem With Police Use of Facial Recognition Isn’t With the Biometrics
A major investigation by the Washington Post has revealed that police in the U.S. regularly use facial recognition as the sole basis for making arrests, contravening internal policies that require officers to have probable cause and corroborating evidence.
The Post’s findings, which also bring to light two previously unreported cases of people wrongfully arrested after being identified with facial recognition, highlight one major potential flaw in biometric technology for law enforcement use cases: police must be trusted to use it ethically. And yet. “Law enforcement agencies across the nation are using the artificial intelligence tools in a way they were never intended to be used,” says the Post: “as a shortcut to finding and arresting suspects without other evidence.”
Journalists Douglas MacMillan, David Ovalle and Aaron Schaffer identified “75 departments that use facial recognition, 40 of which shared records on cases in which it led to arrests. Of those, 17 failed to provide enough detail to discern whether officers made an attempt to corroborate AI matches.”
Among the remaining 23 departments that had detailed records about facial recognition use, they found that “15 departments spanning 12 states arrested suspects identified through AI matches without any independent evidence connecting them to the crime.”
Moreover, “some law enforcement officers using the technology appeared to abandon traditional policing standards and treat software suggestions as facts.”
