Sagem press release: Sagem Sécurité chosen by IBM to ...

David Moss · **Joined:** Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:29:05 +0000 **Posts:** 2416

Quote:

07.10.2009
Sagem Sécurité chosen by IBM to support United Kingdom’s National Identity Assurance Service (NIAS)
PRESS RELEASE

Paris, October 7th, 2009

Sagem Sécurité (Safran group) has signed a contract with IBM to supply and maintain a biometric management solution for British travel and identity documents, on behalf of the British Home Office’s Identity and Passport Service (IPS). The project is a core element of the Government’s plans to upgrade to biometric passports and enhance the security of the UK border.

Sagem Sécurité will provide multibiometric facial and fingerprint recognition technology that was assessed for speed, accuracy and cost in competitive trials developed and run by IBM, using in excess of 10 million images. The technology will enable IBM to help IPS and the UK Border Agency to deliver the next generation of secure and reliable identity documents to British citizens, residents and people requesting asylum, while minimising the risk of fraud.

“Sagem Sécurité is extending its role as an identity management leader in the United Kingdom, through our local subsidiary, Sagem Security UK,” said Jean-Paul Jainsky, Chairman and CEO of Sagem Sécurité. “We already successfully provide biometric management services for visas, Identity Cards for Foreign Nationals and cards for people requesting asylum in the UK, on behalf of the United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA).”

***

Sagem Sécuritéis a high-technology company in the Safran Group. One of the world’s leading suppliers of identity systems, Sagem Sécurité focuses on applications including personal rights and flow management, in particular based on biometrics, a sector in which it is the world leader, secure terminals and smart cards. Its integrated systems and equipment are deployed worldwide and contribute to the safety and security of transportation, data, people and states. Sagem Sécurité is present on all continents.

In the United Kingdom, Sagem Sécurité is represented by Sagem Security UK Ltd.

For more information: www.sagem-securite.com

SAFRAN CONTACTPress Contacts
Nathalie Jullien
Tél : +33 1 58 11 89 62
nathalie.jullien@sagem.com

Caroline Coudert
Tél : + 33 1 58 11 19 47
caroline.coudert@sagem.com

David Moss · **Joined:** Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:29:05 +0000 **Posts:** 2416

1. Sagem issued a press release. As far as I know, IBM didn't, neither did the UK Border Agency, nor the Identity & Passport Service. Are we being kept properly informed?

2. What is the National Identity Assurance Service (NIAS)? This is the first reference to it that I have seen. (The phrase "identity assurance" was instantly pinched by the Home Office from the Crosby report.)

3. The agreement signed looks as though it is to do with the biometric National Identity Register. Is it?

4. Many people, including the FBI, consider that today's face recognition technology is unreliable. Is our money being wasted on the face recognition products and services offered by Sagem?

5. What is this "10 million images" test conducted by IBM? Can we see the results? And the test protocol?

6. In what sense do Sagem "already successfully provide" services to the UK Border Agency?

David Moss · **Joined:** Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:29:05 +0000 **Posts:** 2416

Freedom of Information request, 6 January 2010:

Quote:

A. Home Office press release, Contracts bring ID cards and more secure passports closer:

“IBM was awarded a £265 million contract to continue existing UKBA fingerprinting capabilities and to build and run the database that will store the facial images and fingerprints that are needed to keep the passport in line with international standard, as well as to support the delivery of the ID card.”B. Sagem Sécurité press release, Sagem Sécurité chosen by IBM to support United Kingdom’s National Identity Assurance Service (NIAS):

C. There is considerable doubt about the reliability of biometrics based on face recognition and flat print fingerprinting, please see for example http://dematerialisedid.com/Register/regBiometrics.pdf and http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/nov/01/biometrics-home-office.

In view of A, B and C above, with £265 million of our money at stake, it is important that Sagem’s biometric technology works. Please provide a copy of the detailed report of the competitive trials developed and run by IBM so that the public can assess for themselves the reliability of the technology.

Acknowledgement, 13 January 2010, FOICR 13728/10:

Quote:

Thank you for your e-mail of 6 January in which you ask for biometric technology trial reports developed and run by IBM. Your request is being handled as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

We will aim to send you a full response within twenty working days of our receiving your request, by 3 February 2010.

Response, 12 February 2010:

Quote:

I am sorry that we are still unable to reply substantively to your email of 6 January in which you asked to be provided with a copy of the detailed report of the competitive trials developed and run by IBM. Your request has been handled as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

I confirm that we are still considering your request. Although the Act carries a presumption in favour of disclosure, it provides exemptions which may be used to withhold information in specified circumstances. Some of these exemptions, referred to as ‘qualified exemptions’, are subject to a public interest test. This test is used to balance the public interest in disclosure against the public interest in favour of withholding the information. The Act allows us to exceed the 20 working day response target where we need to consider the public interest test fully.

The information which you have requested is being considered under the exemptions in sections 31(1)(a) and 43(2) of the Act, which relate to law enforcement and commercial interests respectively These are qualified exemption and to consider the public interest test fully we need to extend the 20 working day response period. We now aim to let you have a full response by 3 March.

wtwu · **Joined:** Thu, 30 Dec 2004 09:42:28 +0000 **Posts:** 702

David Moss wrote:

Sagem Sécurité will provide multibiometric facial and fingerprint recognition technology that was assessed for speed, accuracy and cost in competitive trials developed and run by IBM, using in excess of 10 million images.

Did all of the millions of people who supplied these images give their individual, informed, prior consent for them to be used commercially this way ?

Is this the Mexican / US border legal / illegal worker registration card fingerprint database being sold and abused in bulk, again ?

Or is, in fact the actual number of real, individual biometric images much less than claimed, with the bulk of the test samples having being faked / manufactured "synthetically" ?

Or is it a criminal arrestee database, which is being touted as somehow being representative of the general population ?

These people with a vested commercial interest, could claim to have used "10 million" images, which are really only from about 1 million individuals who have been fingerprinted to full criminal arrest standards (8 fingers, 2 thumbs, perhaps 2 palm prints).

Justin · **Posted:** Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:01:00 +0000

Wikipedia has obviously been knobbled by the face recognition crowd-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system

Lots of talk of how much better it has got but very little mention of just how useless it still is.

Justin.

David Moss · **Joined:** Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:29:05 +0000 **Posts:** 2416

Response 4 March 2010 14:48

Quote:

I am sorry that we are still unable to reply substantively to your email of 6 January in which you asked to be provided with a copy of the detailed report of the competitive trials developed and run by IBM.

I confirm that, since our last letter of 4 February, our considerations into your request are still ongoing. As stated in our earlier letter, although the Act carries a presumption in favour of disclosure, it provides exemptions which may be used to withhold information in specified circumstances. Some of these exemptions, referred to as ‘qualified exemptions’, are subject to a public interest test. This test is used to balance the public interest in disclosure against the public interest in favour of withholding the information. The Act allows us to exceed the 20 working day response target where we need to consider the public interest test fully.

The information which you have requested is being considered under the exemptions contained within sections 31(1)(e) 41(1) and 43(2) of the Act, which relate to law enforcement (the operation of immigration controls), information provided in confidence and commercial interests respectively. These are qualified exemption and to consider the public interest test fully we need to extend the 20 working day response period by another twenty days. We now aim to let you have a full response by 31 March 2010.

Not making much progress on this, are we.

Thanks to a meeting with the Home Office, we do know that the test data was supplied to IBM by the Home Office and that their results are being discussed at this week's US National Institute of Standards and Technology conference. But nothing else. Why was Sagem chosen? How reliable is their technology? How reliable does it need to be?

The Home Office must give us a reason to believe.

David Moss · **Joined:** Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:29:05 +0000 **Posts:** 2416

Quote:

From: David Moss
Sent: 04 March 2010 22:46
To: 'IPSFOIs'
Cc: Stephen Hammond
Subject: RE: FOICR 13728/09 - PIT Response

Attn H Reid
Parliamentary & Correspondence Management Team

Dear Sir or Madam

Thank you for your letter dated 3 March 2010, received by email today.

This matter is dragging on.

I take the point that the public interest may sometimes be better served by withholding information than by disclosing it. The balance in this case must surely be in favour of disclosure.

The public are paying several hundred milion pounds to IBM to do a job on our behalf. The public surely has the right to know that that money is being well spent.

There is considerable interest in knowing that immigration controls, which you mention, are being operated effectively. That points to disclosure. The public is paying for law enforcement. IBM (and Sagem Sécurité) are the public's agents in this case. You don't expect your agent to plead confidentiality and refuse to tell you how and why they are spending your money, do you? The public has a commercial interest. It's our money. Our commercial interest deserves respect at least as much as IBM's and Sagem Sécurité's.

If Sagem Sécurité's products work, there can be no conceivable reason why they would want to keep that a secret, it doesn't make commercial sense for them.

If IBM conduct of their trials is academically convincing, why would they not want to publicise that fact?

The Home Office have a public relations project here, they need to "sell" confidence to the public. They're not going to achieve that by being coy.

While the public knows nothing about these biometrics trials of IBM's, do you realise that they were discussed at a conference this week hosted by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology? Scores of people at that conference will know something about these trials while, bizarrely, the people who paid for them, and whose security is supposed to depend on the results, to some extent, will know nothing about them.

There is a large corpus of academic data available suggesting that the reliability of biometrics based on facial geometry and flat print fingerprinting is surprisingly low. That arouses legitimate doubts whether this represents a sound investment of our money. Those doubts need to be allayed. The Home Office may believe that they are acting with a responsible purity of purpose by withholding information. But actually there is a danger that this failure to disclose is indistinguishable to us outsiders – the public, the people paying for IBM and Sagem Sécurité, the people paying for officials to attend agreeable conferences abroad – from a furtive and constipated campaign to hide a guilty secret.

The public needs a reason to believe that these biometrics will assist law enforcement. It can't be taken on trust, it's not a matter of faith, we need a reason. Every 16 year-old who has passed GCSE Science knows that. The Home Office should, too.

I hope that you will include these matters in your considerations.

Yours faithfully
David Moss

cc Stephen Hammond MP

Andrew Watson · **Posted:** Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:49:20 +0000

Do persevere, David. It took me 2 years to get data on blocked records out of DVLA using FOI - but in the end, and despite the agency's repeated attempts to cite FOI exemptions to block release, they had to throw in the towel, and I got all the data I originally asked for.

David Moss · **Joined:** Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:29:05 +0000 **Posts:** 2416

Quote:

Reference: FOICR 13728/10

Date: 17 March 2010

Dear Mr Moss

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

Thank you for your e-mails of 6 January and 4 March, in which you asked for a copy of the detailed trial report of the competitive trials developed and run by IBM. Your request has been handled as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Further to our letter of 3 March, we are now in a position to provide you with a substantive response. I apologise for the delay in doing so.

I can confirm that the Identity and Passport Service holds the information that you requested. However, after careful consideration we have decided that the information is exempt from disclosure under sections 43(2), 41(1) and section 31(1)e of the Freedom of Information Act. These sections provide that information can be withheld where disclosure would or would likely to prejudice:-

Arguments for and against disclosure in terms of the public interest, with the reasons for our conclusion, are set out in the attached Annex.

These exemptions apply to the vast majority of the report you have requested, to the extent that the redacted version would hold no useful information.

If you are dissatisfied with this response you may request an independent internal review of our handling of your request by submitting a complaint within two months to the address below, quoting reference FOICR 13728/10:-

Information Access Team
Home Office
Ground Floor, Seacole Building
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF
e-mail: info.access@homeoffice.si.gov.uk

As part of any internal review the Department's handling of your information request will be reassessed by staff who were not involved in providing you with this response. Should you remain dissatisfied after this internal review, you would have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act.

Yours sincerely

Hazel Reid
Parliamentary and Correspondence Management Team

Annex

Public Interest Test

Sections 31(1)(e) and 31(1)(a)
There is a general public interest in increasing the public awareness of the steps taken to ensure that requirements in relation to the security and operation as underpinning the contracts for services to be delivered by the National Identity Service are robust. In particular matters in relation to the protection of information and systems, there is a public interest in ensuring that resources have been correctly deployed and requirements properly articulated, taking into account the nature of the services that will be delivered by the National Identity Service, and its role in preventing offences. Disclosure could assist in the public understanding into the resources available to counter potential threats to UK citizens, helping to ensure informed public debate. Disclosure of this type of information also demonstrates openness, transparency and accountability in how resources are used in preventing and detecting offences.

Some of the information in the performance trials relates in detail to the security and operational requirements, including details of the biometric false rejection and false acceptance trade-off. We consider that release of this information would lead individuals or groups to presume that the tests accurately reflect the totality of current immigration controls and processes that underpin the National Identity Services. Disclosure could lead to offences such as terrorism, illegal immigration, fraud and computer misuse being perpetrated. In addition disclosure could affect the integrity of the National Identity Service’s role in providing a reliable way of proving and verifying the identity of individuals, and therefore the ability to prevent identity related crime, would be undermined.

Sections 43(2) and 41(1)
There is a general public interest in being open about the performance results of government systems. This can serve to demonstrate that departments have exercised due diligence when assessing commercial suppliers’ products as part of the ICT procurement process and that public money is not wasted.

Some of the information in the contracts relates to information about the successful and unsuccessful bidding suppliers’ system performance, environment design, testing strategies and their operating models. We consider that its release would prejudice the ability of the parties in relation to future commercial contract negotiations, which would not be in the public interest. The information would provide the suppliers’ competitors with information that could be used to put the suppliers at a disadvantage in future ICT procurements, i.e by replicating proprietary configurations and designs. In addition, although the test configurations used by both successful and unsuccessful suppliers were specific to IPS requirements, potential customers would be aware in advance of the performance results which would put the suppliers at a disadvantage when negotiating future contracts. It would not be in the public interest for major suppliers to government to be put at such a disadvantage, or for the suppliers’ relationship with IPS to be subject to detriment. In addition disclosure could deter other suppliers from contracting with government departments, which would reduce the scope for government departments to obtain value for money and the right expertise in future procurements.

Similarly, should its negotiated positions be disclosed, IPS would be put at a disadvantage in relation to future procurements to support the National Identity Service or other ICT procurements. It would not be in the public interest for a government department to be placed at such a disadvantage when negotiating contracts.

After careful consideration we have concluded that the balance of the public interest lies in withholding the information.

Doctor_Wibble · **Joined:** Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:02:46 +0000 **Posts:** 2755

Can't fault the persistence there! Even if you only got "we have our secret methods" as an answer.

There's so much to disagree with in their reasoning it's hard to know where to begin!

Quote:

Disclosure could lead to offences such as terrorism, illegal immigration, fraud and computer misuse being perpetrated.

Erm. doesn't that suggest that the system might not be quite as robust as the sales pitch would have us beleive?

Or is that just a standard-response wording? Just wondering if the "and computer misuse" might be revealing a bit too much by hinting at possibilities beyond that of a closed system.

Guy Herbert · **Posted:** Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:44:05 +0000

Justin wrote:

Wikipedia has obviously been knobbled by the face recognition crowd-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system

Lots of talk of how much better it has got but very little mention of just how useless it still is.

Justin.

People who write about technical topics on wikipedia are often interested in the topics for themselves, rather than to make a point. Which is why wikipedia is pretty OK if you want to make a start in a technical topic. I'd suggest it is "knobbled" by interest in the topic for itself, not a conspiracy to promote facial recognition.

Geraint · **Posted:** Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:18:29 +0000

Keep going with this one David! And congratulations on eliciting further information about the identity of the elusive H. Reid (now known to be Hazel).

Andrew Watson · **Posted:** Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:32:54 +0000

Geraint wrote:

Keep going with this one David! And congratulations on eliciting further information about the identity of the elusive H. Reid (now known to be Hazel).

Definitely keep appealing. It's not until you get the FOI request into the hands of the ICO that things may start to happen. However, be warned that the ICO's office is permanently overwhelmed with work, and your appeal may spend many months with them.

BTW, I've spoken to Hazel Reid a couple of times on the 'phone. She's a pleasant, very junior civil servant who administers the FOI process, and chases the actual internal respondents on your behalf. It's rather shabby of the people at IPS to hide behind her skirts by having her sign the letters. However, if anyone needs to contact her to discuss the processing of their FOI request (but NOT to discuss the content of the responses, over which she has no control, and some of whose arcane details she may not fully understand) then PM me for her 'phone number.

Geraint · **Posted:** Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:45:02 +0000

Andrew Watson wrote:

It's rather shabby of the people at IPS to hide behind her skirts by having her sign the letters.

Indeed. But it would be far easier to correspond if the letters were signed as Ms/Miss/Mrs Reid, or Hazel, or even a made up name. Her actual identity doesn't matter, but replying to letters signed "H. Reid" is needlessly irritating. "Dear IPSFOI" really doesn't cut the mustard; and "Dear Sir or Madam" after so much correspondence does hinder effective communication.

David Moss · **Joined:** Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:29:05 +0000 **Posts:** 2416

An appeal has now been lodged against the decision of the FOI team to withhold the IBM biometrics trial report.

Andrew Watson · **Posted:** Sat, 03 Apr 2010 21:49:06 +0000

Well done. Expect them to keep you waiting two months, then give you the brush-off. At that point, you can appeal to the ICO, and will at last get the chance to have your request considered by someone independent. Be patient.

David Moss · **Joined:** Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:29:05 +0000 **Posts:** 2416

Andrew Watson wrote:

Well done. Expect them to keep you waiting two months, then give you the brush-off. At that point, you can appeal to the ICO, and will at last get the chance to have your request considered by someone independent. Be patient.

After two months, the brush-off arrived by email today at 9:19. One letter and one report including a reference to a letter of mine. The ICO beckons.

NO2ID

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