April 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

our huge jackpots are truly unbeatable.
by Joyce Witt 16 Apr '06

16 Apr '06

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[declan@well.com: [Politech] The NYPD can take photos of you -- but you can't turn your lens on them [fs]]
by Eugen Leitl 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> -----

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[declan@well.com: [Politech] Feds mull mandatory data retention laws for Internet service providers [priv]]
by Eugen Leitl 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> -----

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[schneier@COUNTERPANE.COM: CRYPTO-GRAM, April 15, 2006]
by Eugen Leitl 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

----- Forwarded message from Bruce Schneier <schneier(a)COUNTERPANE.COM> -----

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Just read what our customer has to say
by Dickinson Blanca 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

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Re: [Clips] Say Hello to Voiceprinting
by coderman 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

On 4/14/06, R.A. Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> wrote: > ... > Say Hello to Voiceprinting > Voice biometrics is poised to add more security > to phone-based transactions in Europe. we used a system like this for a retail directory assistance service called Infone. the caller could authenticate by pin, by voice, or both. the voice enrollment required the caller to say "hello, infone" three times or until a suitable voice print could be attained. then when the caller accessed the system they would simply say "hello, infone" and based on their incoming phone number the print was either accepted or rejected. the problem with these systems is that they can only select / identify an individual from a small group of possibilities and line quality / head colds can cause false negatives. for example, if more than 10 people were associated with an account the user had to enter a PIN to identify them, and then provide the "hello, infone" voice print for further authentication. it is also a non-trivial matter to tune the threshold for success/failure appropriately for a given set of users. this is all based on probabilities so you need to set the threshold high enough that the risk of false positives (impostors) is low enough to keep security/losses at acceptable limits while also preventing excessive numbers of false negatives that will annoy and aggravate your customers. still, the tech keeps getting (incrementally) better and it does provide an additional layer of defence. i'm not sure the currently excessive costs associated with this technology are worth the benefit though. (there are basically two companies who specialize in this stuff (they've bought up all the rest) and they charge a premium for these services and technologies :)

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Important Information: (Application Confirmation)
by Jennifer Brooks 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

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[Clips] Say Hello to Voiceprinting
by R.A. Hettinga 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: rah(a)shipwright.com Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 17:07:47 -0400 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Say Hello to Voiceprinting Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB114495589656625392.html> The Wall Street Journal MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW Say Hello to Voiceprinting Voice biometrics is poised to add more security to phone-based transactions in Europe. By DUNCAN GRAHAM-ROWE April 14, 2006 Speech-recognition software is used today by banks and other institutions to conduct customer transactions over the phone without the need for a live customer-service representative. But such systems recognize mainly numbers and words, not individual voices. If you utter the right PIN and account number, you get through. Now a system being readied for commercialization in Europe treats an individual's voice as the gate-opener. That capability would add another security layer: While your PIN can be compromised, your voice is not so easily stolen. It could also eliminate the need to remember and recite account numbers and PINs. Owned by Surrey, U.K.-based Biometric Security, the system, called Voice Vault, requires users simply to utter their name, birth date, and a password, says Chief Technology Officer Vance Harris. The company, like others in the field, already has a handful of banks as clients, who use "voiceprinting" for internal security purposes. But Voice Vault's system will be made available to general account holders at an undisclosed European bank by December, says Mr. Harris. The system will require a user to remember a minimal amount of information, while relying instead on that person's voice for authentication. First, customers "register" their voices in a training session that involves saying words designed to capture the frequencies associated with their voice. The system then constructs a statistical model that predicts what a speech waveform would look like when the person is uttering an entirely novel sentence. Then, when that person's account is accessed over a phone, the system not only confirms that the articulated name, birth date, and password are accurate, but also checks to see if the waveforms of those utterances match the template stored with the account. Such modeling of the vocal tract is a popular approach these days for voice verification, says Aladdin Ariyaeeinia, a voice researcher at the University of Hertfordshire, England. Indeed, many companies are developing similar systems. Much farther in the future is so-called "text independent" identification, which would be so good at recognizing individual voices that you'd merely call your bank and say "What's my balance?" without having to give any other information. Voiceprints have some over other biometrics too. Mr. Ariyaeeinia notes that while some banks are now looking at using more established forms of biometrics for online banking -- fingerprints and iris scans -- these require additional hardware to perform the scans. "The great advantage of voice is that all computers and phones have the sensor built in, whereas other biometrics require additional sensors," says Mike Brookes, a signal-processing researcher at the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London, who specializes in voice recognition. And, he adds, voice recognition also allows you to keep your hands free. "Voice has been on the verge of breaking through for a number of years," says Mr. Brookes. He believes voice verification technology will finally start to take off, particularly with telecommunication and cellphone companies, who are keen to push e-commerce services via Internet-enabled cellphones. Another reason for the adoption of voiceprinting is the recent introduction of so-called "smart" credit and debit cards. These cards have eliminated the use of handwritten signatures for authenticating payments, and instead require customers to punch in a four-digit PIN, which is then verified against a number stored on a chip on the card. Since the recent mass introduction of these PIN-verified cards in the U.K., for example, most types of credit-card fraud have plummeted. According to figures released in February by the U.K.'s Association for Payment Clearing Services, credit-card fraud dropped by 13% in 2005. But one type of fraud continued to rise last year, by 21%: The problem lies in transactions made over the Internet, by phone, or by mail order. In these kinds of transactions, a card's information can be read out or typed in without additional authentication. The field of biometrics, in general, and voiceprinting, in particular, could go a long way toward solving this problem, Mr. Harris says. This article appeared April 11, 2006, on the Web site of Technology Review, an MIT Enterprise. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Urgent Notification #114739046059
by Lillie Saldana 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

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[arrakistor@gmail.com: Official Torpark Release 1.5.0.2a]
by Eugen Leitl 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

----- Forwarded message from Arrakistor <arrakistor(a)gmail.com> -----

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