Iowa selects Digimarc facial recognition solution to enforce one driver, one license
02 November, 2006
category: Biometrics, Transit
In an effort to eliminate driver’s license fraud, the Iowa Department of Transportation has opted for facial recognition software from Digimarc Corp. The $1.4 million contract will also aid in reducing identity theft by insuring that just one license is issued to each applicant.
Beaverton, Ore.–Digimarc Corporation announced the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) has awarded the Company a $1.4 million contract to implement facial recognition-based biometrics to deter driver license fraud. Iowa is one of a growing number of U.S. driver license issuers who have chosen the Digimarc Biometric Identification solution to ensure that only one valid driver license is issued to each legitimate applicant.
“The Iowa DOT is serious about reducing identity theft in the driver license process,” said Shirley Andre, director of the Iowa DOT’s Motor Vehicle Division. “Making proven and effective tools like Digimarc Biometric Identification available to those who issue licenses and our fraud investigators will help immensely in fraud detection and prevention.”
Iowa DOT will implement both “one-to-one” and “one-to-many” facial recognition as part of its driver license enrollment process. For renewals, the Biometric Identification system allows automated one-to-one comparison of the new portrait taken to the applicant’s prior portrait in the driver license database to prevent applicants from getting more than one license. Each night, the Biometric Identification system checks each newly captured portrait against the full database of driver license images as another means to catch attempts by a single individual to get a driver license under multiple names.
Iowa joins a growing number of States such as Massachusetts, Oregon, Texas, Alabama, Colorado and Kansas that are using the Digimarc Biometric Identification solution to deter driver license fraud and identity theft. Go here for further information on these programs.
About Digimarc
Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ: DMRC), based in Beaverton, Oregon, is a leading supplier of secure identity and media management solutions. Digimarc provides products and services that enable the annual production of more than 60 million personal identification documents, including two-thirds of U.S. driver licenses and IDs for more than 20 countries. Digimarc’s digital watermarking technology provides a persistent digital identity for various media content and is used to enhance the security of financial documents, identity documents and digital images, and support other media rights management applications. For further information, go to www.digimarc.com.