Biometrics

Sep 15 2020

WPF to discuss COVID-19 lessons learned and challenges ahead at OECD – Global Privacy Assembly Workshop

WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will be presenting at an OECD and Global Privacy Assembly workshop on the risks, challenges, and potential solutions regarding the intersection of COVID-19 and the uses of identity in a global public health crisis. Event details: COVID-19 and privacy virtual Workshop on “The road to recovery: Lessons learned and challenges ahead”, hosted

Sep 03 2020

Expanding Solutions to Address the Risks of Face Recognition Systems

Today we are publishing the first of a series of discussion papers regarding face recognition and biometrics. The ideas in this paper will be discussed in the ID4Africa live cast, Spotlight on Face Recognition. Too often, discussions about what to do about the risks of face recognition have lacked the kinds of specific protections for

Jul 30 2020

Face Recognition and Face Masks: Accuracy of face recognition plummets when applied to mask-wearers; NIST report

NIST has published its first report regarding face recognition algorithms and the wearing of face masks. The report quantifies how one-to-one face recognition systems perform when they are utilized on images of diverse people wearing a variety of mask types and colors. The study found that pre-COVID-19 FR algorithms have substantial error rates, some reaching as high as 50 percent for false non-match rates.

Apr 14 2020

Without Consent: An analysis of student directory information practices in U.S. schools, and impacts on privacy

Without Consent is the first major benchmarking privacy report to examine school directory information practices and related privacy issues in a multi-year study across more than 5,000 schools at the primary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. The research found troubling and challenging student privacy problems that need to be urgently addressed. The report contains extensive findings and recommendations regarding student privacy, and includes best practices, sample forms, and resources for schools, parents, and students.

Dec 19 2019

NIST report documents undeniable demographic effects in face recognition systems

WPF Press Release: NIST has issued extensive scientific documentation of demographic effects in face recognition systems in its new report, Face Recognition Vendor Test Part 3: Demographic Effects. The detailed findings in the NIST report are troubling. World Privacy Forum calls on the face recognition industry to accept, acknowledge, and address the new NIST findings, and calls for new multistakeholder work as well as significant safety guardrails.

New Report: Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
National IDs Around the World — Interactive map

About this Data Visualization: This interactive map displays the presence...
Report: From the Filing Cabinet to the Cloud: Updating the Privacy Act of 1974

This comprehensive report and proposed bill text is focused on the Privacy Act of 1974, an important and early Federal privacy law that applies to the government sector and some contractors. The Privacy Act was written for the 1970s information era -- an era that was characterized by the use of mainframe computers and filing cabinets. Today's digital information era looks much different than the '70s: smart phones are smarter than the old mainframes, and documents are now routinely digitized and stored and perhaps even analyzed in the cloud, among many other changes. The report focuses on why the Privacy Act needs an update that will bring it into this century, and how that could look and work. This work was written by Robert Gellman, and informed by a two-year multi-stakeholder process.