Invisible Biometrics: Your Voice is Your New IDNicholas West The fear of identity theft and cyber-banking crime has been the latest sales pitch to encourage accepting identity tech such as facial recognition, iris scans, and fingerprinting even tears as well as their attendant databases. There is an ongoing cooperative effort between global banks and corporations to ensure that there will be standardized, centralized entry into the consumer/Internet/banking matrix of the future. Now it is being revealed that voiceprint is already being used as a key identifier and is becoming a big business for data brokers, as well as being employed by major corporations and governments. As reported by the Associated Press: Businesses and governments around the world increasingly are turning to voice biometrics, or voiceprints, to pay pensions, collect taxes, track criminals and replace passwords. We sometimes call it the invisible biometric, said Mike Goldgof, an executive at Madrid-based AGNITiO, one of about 10 leading companies in the field. Those companies have helped enter more than 65 million voiceprints into corporate and government databases, according to Associated Press interviews with dozens of industry representatives and records requests in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. Theres a misconception that the technology we have today is only in the domain of the intelligence services, or the domain of Star Trek,' said Paul Burmester, of London-based ValidSoft, a voice biometric vendor. The technology is here today, well-proven and commonly available. (emphasis added) And business is booming industry revenues are expected to double in the coming year to nearly $1 billion annually. Other major companies and governments cited as users or soon to be users of this technology include: Wells Fargo: Over 70 million customers. Barclays: 12 million retail customers. Canadas TD Bank Group: 22 million customers worldwide. The National Australia Bank Ltd. and The Bank of New Zealand: part of a conglomerate which has 12 million customers total. New Zealands Internal Revenue Department: 1 million people have been logged and databased by their voice. Vanguard Mutual Fund: tens of thousands of customers speak the phrase my voice is my password. Mobile phone company Turkcell: 10 million Turkish customers are identified by their voice. South Africa: 7 million people are identified by voice in order to prove the validity of Social Security payments. But it wont be restricted to straight finance; your voice could become a key for nearly everything, including travel: And, naturally, United States law enforcement is using the technology at this point its only been documented to be in use for tracking offenders and parolees. But given the track record of domestic spying in the United Sates, are we so naive to think that its truly restricted only to the guilty? This technology offers up widespread concern, as even supposedly anonymous online or telephone communications would seem vulnerable. The list of potential abuse is endless. Then, when we add some of the speaker systems that are available to be deployed in public spaces, as well as new spy tech that can recover voice imprints from physical objects, its not only the topic of conversation that could be tracked, but right down to specific individuals. For those who believe that simply disconnecting from the Internet or from modern gadgetry is a solution, this should be a wake-up call that the surveillance-industrial complex knows no bounds. Sources: Recently by Nicholas West: 