South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) , a government backed research and development organisation, has developed a multimodal registration system for children. The CSIR system will enrol the biometric information of babies and store them on their birth certificates to be used to identify them later in life. In a project that will be funded by the Department of Science and Technology, the organisation will store fingerprint, ear, and iris features, according to a report in IOL. The newspaper notes that over the next two years, researchers will be collecting biometric data samples from minors to establish whether it can be used to verify or determine their identities. “Systems which are instrumental in the prevention of identity fraud do not cater for children,” said Kribashnee Dorasamy, technologist/computer engineer at the CSIR. The identification will play a key role in assisting police and safety departments during investigations related to children in the future. Yaseen Moolla, senior researcher and project manager, said: “Existing technology does not appeal to the changing features from when a child is born and when they are adolescents. This technology and algorithm is a better way of finding fingerprints from children. It models the growth of a child and scales the accuracy. “The pattern or the external shape of the ear is fairly consistent as the child grows. The aim of the biometric system is to eventually have a method that can be used to recognise a child.”
PRIVACY & SURVEILLANCE IN AFRICA 