I-Cube (Integrated, Intelligent Imaging) E-Mail info at I-Cube dot co dot za OR Call 082 562 8225

The following is an OPEN letter to hotel groups indicating how LPR can be used with existing cameras and system, if integrated, intelligent imaging is added!

I would like to expand on the I-CUBE vision for a typical hotel group, for example, SUN INTERNATIONAL’S SUN CITY. The guest makes a booking, indicating their license plate number as NP123.

When NP123 arrives at any of the 8 entrances, immediately a welcome board displays a welcome message and directs Mr & Mrs Smith to, firstly a reserved parking, and then to reception.

A message is sent to reception showing a past picture of Mr & Mrs Smith, so they can be welcomed by name as they arrive.

When Mr. Smith walks into the casino, being a MVG member the casino marketing manager is made aware of Mr. Smith’s arrival (as all MVG members are enrolled in the Facial Recognition database) via a PDA. The barman is informed to prepare a Dirty Martini, Mr. Smith’s favourite drink.

Unfortunately while at the casino, the Smiths car is stolen and the criminal attempts to leave the hotel. However, while the car colour and shape matched, and the license plate was the same, the face of the driver was not the same and security immediately arrested the criminals and returned the car.

Before handing over the criminals, they are found to have been involved with 7 other criminal events in the area, which is then handed over to the police as supporting evidence so they are not immediately released. The criminals are enrolled in the 3D neural network facial database so that if they ever come back an alarm is immediately activated and they can be followe

Mrs Smith had left her GAMBLING DAY CARD in the car, which the criminals handed on to an associate to collect the money in the card. When the criminal went to the claim the money in the card, her face was compared to the face of the person who was issued the car earlier that day, and the person who had been using the card throughout the day. Of course, when none of the faces associated with the card matched the person who wanted the money, appropriate action was taken and the criminal was apprehended.

By reviewing whom the person was associated with, a link was obtained to the criminals involved with the car theft and other criminal activities, allowing the person to be charged with a number of outstanding warrants.

The next day the local gambling board wanted to know about all incidents in the casino. The gambling board authorities were able to review the above incident, plus take note of the 35 banned gamblers, which were removed before entry to the casino, and the 3 people who had enrolled in the SUN INTERNATIONAL SELF BAN PROGRAM. Two of the 3 people who had self-banned themselves had also banned themselves from ALL CASINOS in Gauteng, and the gambling board members could see that the TEMPLATES of the people banned had automatically been sent to the appropriate casinos, preventing any banned person from gambling.

At 7 am the hotel security staff were automatically notified that 4 vehicles had been in the parking area for longer than 7 days, along with the vehicle colour, shape and a picture of the driver allowing them to find the car and take appropriate action.

The SUN INTERNATIONAL delivery web site allows any authorised person to see when a vehicle arrived and departed, and select people add and remove vehicles, which are allowed entry and exit without being delayed.

At 8 am all the shops in the hotel area were notified of the last 24 hours traffic, indicating what time staff members came onto duty, when security personal went past the store, allowing them to immediately follow up any activity either in or around their stores.

At 9 am all stores, the casino and the hotel are updated with the latest WANTED DATABASES, for manual (check, credit card, returns, etc.) and automatic identification of UNDESIRABLE PEOPLE.

At 11 am the SMITHS depart, having had the car colour, shape, license plate and driver verified on exit! They automatically received a THANK YOU SMS from the HOTEL, whishing them a safe trip.

At the end of the money, those utilising the information gained from the system are charged 3c per transaction, covering all the hardware, software, cameras, maintenance and support required to keep the system operational 24/7/365.

If you are interested in assisting in presenting the above vision to selected hotel groups, please let me know how we can work together to bring this to the right peoples attention?

Please note, that all of the above utilises existing hardware and systems where possible, just adding the integrated, intelligent imaging software!

The V&A Waterfront has defended its security following the weekend robbery of an upmarket jewellery store by a hammer wielding gang.

On Saturday night, six robbers took less than 30 seconds to rob Tanzanite International, part of the Shimansky group, of more than R2 million worth of jewellery, without uttering a single word to staff or customers in the store.

V&A spokesperson Maureen Thomson said today that the robbery was one of a few such incidents at the Waterfront and the robbers were professionals and had planned it to the T.

"The fact that it took them less than two minutes shows they knew what they were doing and had planned it well," said Thomson.

"Our security does an excellent job," she said. "We have a minimum number of such incidents lowest in the Western Cape, maybe in the country."

Thomson said the Clocktower was fairly quiet, "it being a Saturday evening and I understand it would be easier to get away".

Neville Goldberg, the manager of the jewellery store in the Waterfront's Clocktower Shopping Centre, said the robbers, who had been in the store on two previous occasions this month, stole about 96 items, including tanzanite earrings, rings and pendants. All were 18 carat gold, encrusted with tanzanite stones and diamonds.

Goldberg said the incident, which happened at about 7.25pm on Saturday, took about 25 seconds while six foreign customers were in the shop.

The robbers had stormed into store, smashed the glass cabinets with the hammer, before fleeing on foot.

Goldberg said CCTV footage showed that the men were in the store on August 7 and again last Saturday. Both times they asked about the prices of items in the same cabinets they smashed. Goldberg had been suspicious and had alerted security.

Of Saturday night's robbery, he said the men had not said anything nor had they threatened anyone. When the men ran out of the store, Golberg said he pushed the panic button and threw a chair at them. He screamed for security.

"I ran after the men and screamed, 'Stop them, stop them' Only when I came back into the store, I saw a female security walking at a snail's pace towards the store."

Police spokeswoman Inspector Bernadine Steyn confirmed the robbery.

She said the men fled on foot to a white Nissan Sentra (CY 196 222) parked at the entrance.

Miché Petersen, an employee, said she was more angry with security than about the incident.

She was helping an American couple at a counter, which the men smashed after pushing the customer out of the way.

"There was glass flying all over and then they were gone," said Petersen.

She said the customers who had been in the store at the time had left without buying anything.

Last September armed suspects made off with pieces to the value of R1 million from Diamond International, another jewellery story also situated at the Clock Tower Shopping Centre.

Anyone with information can contract Captain Roy Jackson at the Table Bay Harbour Police station on 021 403 1001 or 021 403 1007.

Mixed reactions to the facial-features recognition technology project of the BKA

The assessment of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) according to which biometric visual-image search systems are not advanced enough to be used by the police to search for persons has led to mixed reactions. The Federal Criminal Police Office presented the fairly sobering research results of its visual-image search systems project on Wednesday in Wiesbaden. Given the present state of the technology the system was unfit to be deployed, the Office concluded. The crime researchers are placing their hopes on 3D recognition facial systems, the development of which is still in its infancy, however. In response to the results Bitkom, the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media, has underscored the economic importance of the technology. For his part the Federal Data Protection Commissioner Peter Schaar is warning against the use of an immature technology. Meanwhile at the BIOSIG 2007 event the advances in 3D facial-recognition technology the criminologists of the BKA are placing their hopes on have been discussed.

In his statement on the final report (PDF file) of the BKA on the project Federal Data Protection Commissioner Peter Schaar made it clear that biometric facial recognition technology must on no account, even if at some point in the future the point of maturity was reached, lead to an all-round surveillance regime. "Especially problematic are false positives, which, in the event of a genuine hunt, render innocent people suspects for a time, create a need for justification on their part and make further checks by the authorities unavoidable," Mr. Schaar declared. This would generate a pervasive climate of surveillance, which in turn would impact upon the behavior of citizens. The Commissioner also demanded legal safeguards against the linking of the image data recorded by surveillance cameras with the digital passport photographs stored in the passport and ID registers.

The German IT association Bitkom has published a statement that highlights the economic importance of automatic facial recognition technologies. According to Bitkom sales on the biometrics market will grow from 120 million euros today to 300 million euros in 2010. The facial recognition technologies' share is predicted to rise to about 30 percent. The technology would be deployed in the banking area in particular, Bitkom, which does not mention the use of automatic facial recognition technology for police purposes, writes. What the association does say, however, is that the Federal Criminal Police Office had "during the last few months in a pilot project at the main station of the German city of Mainz successfully tested a system designed to pick out individuals in crowds with the help of biometric data."

At an event of the Darmstadt-based CAST Forum on Biometrics and eCards, organized by the Biosig [Biometrics and Electronic Signatures] working group of the Gesellschaft für Informatik [Informatics Society] and the EU Project 3D Face, it has become apparent that even resorting to 3D cannot solve the basic problems associated with biometrics-based automated searches. 3D systems suited for everyday use would need to operate flawlessly in a broad range of weather and lighting conditions, Ludwig Turba, the person in charge of physical-security access control at the airports in Berlin, declared. His agency was preparing a trial during which 400 employees of the airports would be issued with ID cards featuring 3D facial data, Mr. Turba said. The trial was designed to gauge the potential of physical-security access control technologies that might be deployed at the Berlin-Brandenburg airport, which was currently being built and would be opened in 2011, he added.

3D face recognition for Regional Transportation District of Denver

Regional Transportation District (RTD) of Denver is a public transportation district that provides transit services to 8 counties and 44 municipalities, with 85 million annual passenger trips aboard light rail, bus, access-a-Ride and call-n-Ride services. With 1300 buses, 16 miles of light rail and another 19 miles to be added within a year, the RTD’s Treasury handles millions of dollars in collected transit fees per year.

The Treasury is secured by a “man-trap” with a Lenel card access system opening doors into and out of the man-trap only for authorized Treasury personnel. A4Vision/Bioscript 3D biometric facial recognition systems add security to this infrastructure by verifying the ID card with the rightful owner ensuring that lost or stolen cards cannot be used by anyone other than the authorized party to whom a card has been issued.

There are typically three ways to authenticate or prove an identity to a system or a person.
* Something you have – like an ID card.
* Something you know - such as a PIN number.
* Something you are - a biometric such as facial features, fingerprints etc.

When two or more of these are used together for an identification decision it is called multi factor authentication. The RTD solution using dual factor, card plus biometric, offers a very secure solution with the convenience of 3D face recognition.

Don Young, RTD Treasury manager said, “We have Treasury’s security access thresholds set very high on A4Vision/Bioscript new Vision Access 3D Face Reader, because Treasury cannot tolerate any false accepts, yet we experience a 99 percent throughput rate. A4Vision/Bioscript readers are serving us with fast speeds and high accuracy.”

The installed solution utilizes the Vision Access 3D Face Reader and the 3Di application for enrolment and template distribution. The solution is integrated with RTD’s existing Lenel access control system. A4Vision products are built specifically to be quick and easy to integrate legacy systems simplifying deployment. The Vision Access 3D face reader interfaces with the Lenel hardware via Wiegand protocol for transmitting door open or lock signals and providing an audit trail in the Lenel host system. The 3Di (3D Integration) is an approved and certified Lenel Open Access application with features specifically designed for integration with legacy systems streamlining installation and ongoing administration.

The A4Vision system is working in verification mode (1:1) at RTD for dual factor authentication adding a higher level of security to this protected area. In verification mode the A4 system first accepts a proximity card and then will reference the 3D face template stored with that card number in a Database. The system then verifies that the person belongs to the card by matching the stored template to the person standing in front of the 3D Face reader. The A4 System performs this matching process in less than one second for very fast throughput.

A4Vision/Bioscript 3D facial recognition system is unique in that it can also perform identification (1: N) transactions with large databases for physical access control and time and attendance transactions. This provides for a very convenient control point while maintaining very secure matching levels.

A4Vision readers perform both verification and identification in real-time; accommodate variable angles, motion, and changing light conditions, including night; and provide a completely passive, non-invasive mode of identification with consistently high rates of accuracy. The Vision Access 3D Face Reader applied and assessed by RTD achieves sub-second processing speeds in biometric scanning.

The United Kingdom has set in motion its biometric system of data collection in the Philippines as part of its efforts to flush out terrorists and criminals, Ambassador Peter Beckingham said yesterday.

“The new biometric data collection processing system could help in setting the right people we wanted to go to UK.” Beckingham said at the formal launching of the system yesterday.

The British embassy set up the biometric system in the Philippines, the first in Southeast Asia and the Pacific region, because of the large number of people who travel to UK, according to Mark Date, UK Embassy Entry Clearance manager. “This is part of the five-year program of the British government to install a biometric system worldwide.”

Date explained that biometrics will really help them identify the right people from the terrorists.

Visa applicants were guided through the new and advance biometric data collection process by no less than Beckingham.

Beckingham formally introduced the UK government’s advanced and safer system for screening and granting visas to UK-bound applicants at the UK Visa Application Center in Makati City.

Beckingham spoke highly of the biometric system which his government is implementing, noting its major benefits to applicants.

“The biometric data collection process enables us to make the visa application process faster and safer for Filipinos wanting to travel, work, or reside in the United Kingdom. It is in the interest of our government and our customers that we provide a system of identification that protects everyone from fraud, identity theft, terrorism, and organized crime,” Beckingham said.

“By using this advanced system, we are also introducing the Filipino public to a system of identification that is going to be the wave of the future,” he added.

The new system requires applicants to go through a digital finger scan and digital photograph that will provide them easier, faster and safer access to UK travel in the future.

The system helps protect applicants and their family from identity theft and will prevent visa applicant from being accidentally mistaken for another person with the same or similar name. In the longer term, applicants’ biometric data will be used to facilitate fast passage through gates of entry at the UK ports and airports.

Beckingham has been at the forefront of rapid and dramatic changes in the involvement of the British government in development issues in the Philippines.

Beckingham is known for enabling state executives and non-government organizations to work together on crucial issues involving human rights and peace-building through UK-funded initiatives, despite the tensions that often exist between government and civil society.