deep learning
Biometric Identity Theft
Recently, I have been researching the potential for fraud and identity theft using fingerprints from photos posted on social media. Last week Amazon released its “Amazon One” Palm Scanner to pay for purchases when shopping. That announcement made me wonder, what are the potential implications for fraud and identity theft using biometric data taken from images?
Technology continues to improve rapidly, which often means, “Where there is the will, there’s a way.”
There are a surprising number of ways to accurately identify someone from a photo or video. Moreover, there is technology to copy fingerprints from social media photos taken up to three meters away. New technology has been proven effective at using 3D printing technology to create “fake fingerprints” that bypass many fingerprint scanners.
Since fingerprints can be copied from photos taken up to three meters away, can a palm print be copied from a photo taken 5-10 meters away? That question led to an interesting but unscientific experiment where I took pictures of my hand, enlarged them, measured the distance between the ridges and furrows of my fingers and my palm, and compared the results. Spoiler – probably not (yet).
There are several areas where that distance was similar for both my fingers and palm. But, there were also areas on my palm where the average distance between “landmarks” was 3-5+ times greater. It turns out that a palm image is often segmented into 3-4 distinct regions for identification purposes, likely due to this type of variation. This link was helpful in understanding the process.
This research led to an idea for a chip-based embedded filter for smart devices and laptops. It would obfuscate key biometric information when extracting the data for display without affecting the integrity of the original stored image. This functionality would automatically provide an additional layer of privacy and data protection. It would require optimized object detection capabilities (possibly R-CNN) that were highly efficient and run on a capable but low-energy processor like the Arm Cortex-M. Retraining and upgrades would be accomplished with firmware updates.
Edit 2020-10-13: This article on “Tiny ML” from Medium.com is the perfect tie-in to the abovementioned idea.
While Amazon’s technology is much newer and presumably at least partially based on their 2019 Patent Application (which does look impressive), it makes you wonder how susceptible these devices might be to fraud given reports of the scans occurring “almost instantaneously.” Speed is one aspect of successful large-scale commercial adoption, but the accuracy and integrity of the system are far more important from my perspective.
Time will tell how robust and foolproof Amazon’s new technology really is. Given their reach, this could occur sooner rather than later. Ultimately, multiple forms of biometric scans (such as a full handprint with shape, palm, and fingerprints or a retina scan 2-3 minutes prior to the palm scan to maintain performance) may be required for enhanced security, especially with mobile devices.
Additional Resources:
- In-depth NIH document that is helpful in understanding the process and issues.
- A Simplified Guide to Fingerprint Analysis
- This is a 2012 Fingerprint and Palmprint Recognition Approach Report from the European Journal of Scientific Research that has many images and very good explanations.
- “A Textural Approach to Palmprint Identification“
New Perspectives on Business Ecosystems
One of the many changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has been a sea change in thoughts and goals around Supply Chain Management (SCM). Existing SCM systems were up-ended in mere months as it has become challenging to procure raw materials to components, manufacturing has shifted to meet new unanticipated needs, and logistics challenges have arisen from health-related staffing issues, safe working distances, and limited shipping options and availability. In short, things are a mess!
Foundational business changes will require modern approaches to Change Management. Change is not easy – especially at scale, so having ongoing support from the top down and providing incentives to motivate the right behaviors, actions, and outcomes will be especially critical to the success of those initiatives. And remember, “What gets measured gets managed,” so focusing on the aspects of business and change that matter will become a greater focus.
Business Intelligence systems will be especially important for Descriptive Analysis. Machine Learning will likely play a larger role as organizations seek a more comprehensive understanding of patterns and work toward accurate Predictive Analysis. And, of course, Artificial Intelligence / Deep Learning / Neural Networks should accelerate as the need for Prescriptive Analysis grows. Technology will provide many of the insights needed for business leaders to make the best decisions in the shortest amount of time, which is both possible and prudent.
This is also the right time to consider upgrading to a collaborative, agile business ecosystem that can quickly and cost-effectively expand and adapt to whatever comes next. Click on this link to see more of the benefits of this type of model.
Whether you like it or not, change is coming. So, why not take a proactive posture to help ensure that this change is good and meets the objectives your company or organization needs.
Changes like this are all-encompassing, so it is helpful to begin with the mindset, “Win together, Lose together.” In general, it helps to have all areas of an organization moving in lockstep towards a common goal, but at a critical juncture like this, that is no longer an option.
Discussions that Seed the Roots of Creativity
A few months ago I purchased Fitbit watches for my children and myself. My goals were twofold. First, I was hoping that they would motivate all of us to be more active. Second, I wanted to foster a sense of competition (including fair play and winning) within my children. Much of their pre-High School experiences focused on “participation,” as many schools feel that competition is bad. Unfortunately, competition is everywhere in life, so if don’t play to win you may not get the opportunity to play at all.
It is fun seeing them push to be the high achiever for the day, and to continually push themselves to do better week-by-week and month-by-month. I believe this creates a wonderful mindset that makes you want to do more, learn more, achieve more, and make an overall greater impact with everything they do. People who do that are also more interesting to spend time with, so that is a bonus.
Recently my 14 year-old son and I went for a long walk at night. It was a cold, windy, and fairly dark night. We live in fairly rural area so it is not uncommon to see and hear various wild animals on a 3-4 mile walk. I’m always looking for opportunities to teach my kids things in a way that is fun and memorable, and in a way that they don’t realize they are being taught. Retention of the concepts is very high when I am able to make it relevant to something we are doing.
That night we started talking about the wind. It was steady with occasional gusts, and at times it changed direction slightly. I pointed out the movement on bushes and taller grass on the side of the road. We discussed direction, and I told him to think about the wind like an invisible arrow, and then explained how those arrows traveled in straight lines or vectors until they met some other object. We discussed which object would “win,” and how the force of one object could impact another object. My plan was to discuss Newton’s three laws of motion.
My son asked if that is why airplanes sometimes appear to be flying at an angle but are going straight. He seemed to be grasping the concept. He then asked me if drones would be smart enough to make those adjustments, which quickly led to me discussing the use potential future of “intelligent” AI-based drones by the military. When he was 9 he wanted to be a Navy SEAL, but once he saw how much work that was he decided that he would rather be Transformer (which I explained was not a real thing). My plan was to use this example to discuss robotics and how you might program a robot to do various tasks, and then move to how it could learn from the past tasks and outcomes. I wanted him to logically break down the actions and think about managing complexity. But, no such luck that night.
His mind jumped to “Terminator” and “I, Robot.” I pointed out that Science Fiction does occasionally become Science Fact, which makes this type of discussion even more interesting. I also pointed out that there is spectrum between the best possible outcome – Utopia, and the worst possible outcome – Dystopia, and asked him what he thought could happen if machines could learn and become smarter on their own.
His response was that things would probably fall somewhere in the middle, but that there would be people at each end trying to pull the technology in their direction. That seemed like a very enlightened estimation. He asked me what I thought and I replied that I agreed with him. I then noted how some really intelligent guys like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk are worried about the dystopian future and recently published a letter to express their concerns about potential pitfalls of AI (artificial intelligence). This is where the discussion became really interesting…
We discussed why you would want a program or a robot to learn and improve – so that it could continue to become better and more efficient, just like a person. We discussed good and bad, and how difficult it could be to control something that doesn’t have morals or understand social mores (which he felt if this robot was smart enough to learn on its own that it would also learn those things based on observations and interactions). That was an interesting perspective.
I told him about my discussions with his older sister, who wants to become a Physician, about how I believe that robotics, nanotechnology, and pharmacology will become the future of medicine. He and I took the logical next step and thought about a generic but intelligent medicine that identified and fixed problems independently, and then sent the data and lessons learned for others to learn from.
I’m sure that we will have an Internet of Things (IoT) discussion later, but for now I will tie this back to our discussion and Fitbit wearable technology.
After the walk I was thinking about what just happened, and was pleased because it seemed to spark some genuine interest in him. I’m always looking for that perfect recipe for innovation, but it is elusive and so far lacks repeatability. It may be possible to list many of the “ingredients” (intelligence, creativity, curiosity, confidence (to try and accept and learn from failure), multi-disciplinary experiences and expertise) and “measurements” (such as a mix of complementary skills, a mix of roles, and a special environment (i.e., strives to learn and improve, rewards both learning and success but doesn’t penalize failure, and creates a competitive environment that understands that in most cases the team is more important than any one individual)).
That type of environment is magical when you can create it, but it takes so much more than just having people and a place that seem to match the recipe. A critical “activation” component or two is missing. Things like curiosity, creativity, ingenuity, and a bit of fearlessness.
I tend to visualize things, so while I was thinking about this I pictured a tree with multiple “brains” (my mental image looked somewhat like broccoli) that had visible roots. Those roots were creative ideas that went off in various directions. Trees with more roots that were bigger and went deeper would stand out in a forest of regular trees.
Each major branch (brain/person) would have a certain degree of independence, but ultimately everything on the tree worked as a system. To me, this description makes so much more sense than the idea of a recipe, but it still doesn’t bring me closer to being able map the DNA of this imaginary tree.
At the end of our long walk it seemed that I probably learned as much as my son did. We made a connection that will likely lead to more walks and more discussions.
And in a strange way, I can thank the purchase of these Fitbit watches for being the motivation for an activity that led to this amazing discussion. From that perspective alone this was money well spent.
Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 