D. E. Antonov, CEO of IrisDevices
Gorshkov A. A., CBO Iris Devices
What is migration armament
Migration armament is a set of technical means that ensure security in a controlled territory through biometric identification of people to ensure control and control access to physical objects and information resources.
The purpose of the introduction of migration weapons is:
- ensuring the internal security of the State from external and internal threats related to their anthropogenic sources;
- timely identification of potential violators in the controlled territory, whose actions may lead to negative consequences;
- migration management by creating favorable living conditions for “desirable” and unfavorable conditions for “undesirable” people, up to their immediate expulsion in the required direction;
- identification of current and forecasting of possible anthropogenic threats to the security of the State at all stages of their formation and implementation.
Problem
According to the UN, in 2015 the number of international migrants and refugees reached 244 million people, which is 41% more than in 2000. If the growth in the number of migrants remains constant, then according to forecasts, by 2050 their number worldwide will reach 321 million people. The migration process in Europe is turning into a tangible problem. The countries where migrants come from have been in ruins for many years, but such a massive flow of refugees has not been observed before. Why did such changes occur? Migration is increasing even from countries where there is no war, for example, from Pakistan. If the Christians of Syria had nowhere to go, then it is not clear why Muslims from Pakistan need to take risks and pay considerable sums for a difficult and long move. Pakistan is a non-belligerent country, except for Jama and Kashmir. In 1970, Pakistani generals began to carry out harsh repression in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). As a result, 10 million refugees arrived in India within a few months. This forced the Indian leadership to decide to start a war with Pakistan, because it was cheaper for India than accepting refugees, which became a heavy burden on the Indian economy.
It is obvious that migrants are a big problem for Europe. If earlier this process was managed to be regulated, now it is difficult to control the rapid influx of migrants. New countries are being involved in the reception and distribution of migrants. The uneven migration burden on the EU countries provokes discontent and a split between them. Perhaps the creation of this problem was planned. If this is the case, then we are facing a new type of impact – migration. Among all migrants who went to Europe in 2015, Syrians accounted for 40%, while many migrants called themselves “Syrian refugees” while being dark–skinned Africans. When numerous migrants have a negative attitude, increase social tension and aggravate the crime situation, act aggressively and harmoniously, then the nature of such relations becomes military. So a new type of weapon is being formed before our eyes – migration. It is quite possible that the leadership of the terrorist organization “Islamic State”, banned in the Russian Federation, began to use refugees as a battering ram against Europe, especially since under the guise of refugees it is possible to infiltrate their fighters, who will be able to meet with representatives of sleeping cells on the spot. In the future, when the right moment comes, reactivation of cells for terrorist acts is possible at the command of the leaders. This is already the seizure of territories and power, a kind of Trojan barrel with gunpowder, where you can put any amount of it to blow up the situation. According to the latest draft of the EU strategy on artificial intelligence, presented by Reuters and EURACTIV, the European Union is no longer interested in introducing a ban on face recognition in public places, but in the future, with the mass introduction of biometric systems, there should be “clear criteria” for the use of identification systems in the EU. According to EURACTIV, the document states that such an assessment will depend on the purpose for which the technology is used. If biometric data is used for mass surveillance, there should be clear criteria by which people should be identified.
For people from the Middle East, historically and from the point of view of the presence of the diaspora, Europe is of interest not Russia, but Europe. On the other hand, quite a lot of citizens from CIS countries live in Russia. A large number of migrants come to work in our country from the countries of Southeast Asia, China and Vietnam. According to official data alone, at least 10 million foreign citizens live in Russia, about 4 million are in the country illegally. Based on data from Rosstat, the migration Service, research by the Migration XXI Century Foundation, the Environment sociological service and others, a “portrait of a Russian migrant” was compiled: the bulk of them are men, 74% of whom are aged 18 to 29 years, 26% aged 30 to 38 years. The majority of migrants (66%) speak Russian poorly or not at all. Due to cultural and linguistic differences between local residents and migrants, conflicts often arise. The lack of proper control over migrants contributes to their involvement in criminal groups, through which, for example, powerful drug trafficking passes. According to the Federal Penitentiary Service, a third of foreigners are serving sentences in prisons precisely for drug-related crimes. The combination of these factors does not exclude the possible occurrence of an uncontrolled wave of migrants on the territory of our State. It should be noted that in Iraq, both in Kurdish and government territories, strict filtering of migrants is carried out, which allows identifying terrorists. One of the advantages of migration weapons is that they can be used both in wartime and in peacetime. Due to its nature, migration can serve as a covert attack that cannot be immediately noticed and identified as an aggressive enemy strategy.
Migrant control requires new solutions
The defense capability of the State consists of many aspects, which are based on the functionality of the final technical solutions and the human factor. Increasing the defense capability of the State is possible by expanding the functionality of devices and minimizing the influence of the human factor on decisions made.
At the moment, in order to increase the level of state security in certain local territories, biometric control systems using facial identification technology are being put into operation within the framework of the Safe City projects, etc. This technology allows using CCTV cameras at a sufficiently large distance to identify a person’s identity while checking the presence of his data in the list of wanted criminals and the legality of his stay in this place. But this technology has significant disadvantages, the main of which are low accuracy and reliability of identification. With the size of the database of stored biometric data of more than 10 million people or with a comparable number of search queries to this database to identify an identifiable person, the so-called errors of the first and second kind begin to increase exponentially when the system begins not to recognize “its own” or to take “strangers” for “its own”. And if errors of the first kind can be compensated by repeated identification, which in principle does not affect security, but makes it inconvenient to operate, then errors of the second kind lead to significant labor costs when using this technology in the aspect of the State’s defense capability, since the constant presence of a controlling person is required. Because of this, this technology is absolutely not applicable for identification in global government systems: the border and migration control system, the unified payment system and in the systems of citizens’ access to confidential information or to personal government services.
Other technologies being introduced, such as identification by palm veins, palm prints and voice, also have a number of disadvantages and at the same time, as well as identification by face, are insufficiently accurate and unreliable. Even with their complex use in a single system, the cumulative accuracy characteristics obtained do not allow using this system on the scale of our State.
Limitations of modern widely implemented types of biometrics:
- identification based on a 2D image of a face has low statistical reliability and is very sensitive to illumination and the presence of interference;
- biometric identification by fingerprint and 3D facial image is carried out using specialized devices that are unstable to the threats of imitation and substitution of objects;
- the accuracy of biometrics based on the pattern of the veins of the palm depends on many cumulative factors: the size of the palm, the degree of pressure of the fingers, the temperature of the palm, the presence of age-related diseases, which makes this technology not applicable in the streaming mode of identification.
At the moment, widely publicized and implemented biometric systems do not have reliable, non-cooperative algorithms for detecting attempts to replace biometric features with fakes and ensuring high identification accuracy with large amounts of data. Most methods of biometric identification are not suitable for controlling the migration of people in emergency situations. This is clearly seen in the situation with coronavirus infection: people will not use contact biometric identification solutions, for example, by fingerprints, for fear of infection, and the widespread use of medical masks will not allow for sufficient accuracy of identification by face. The only non-invasive, non-contact technology that has the necessary characteristics of accuracy and reliability when operating in extreme emergency situations is biometric identification by the iris. The characteristics of this method of identity identification overlap all currently known biometrics with their combined use. Only DNA identification is more accurate than iris identification, but this method requires the collection of biological material and is still very long in time compared to other methods.
The classical method of identifying a person’s identity by the iris of the eye is based on the registration of black-and-white images obtained using infrared illumination and an infrared camera, with subsequent processing of these images to form a digital code that is used for identification by comparing it with codes previously registered and stored in the database. The identity is established when a certain degree of coincidence of the iris code of the identified person with one of the stored in the database is achieved.
The introduction of this technology in the USA, Great Britain, the United Arab Emirates and other countries revealed the following problems:
- the iris pattern, which is recorded only in the infrared spectrum, can be faked;
- in the infrared spectrum, the structure of the light iris is less visible compared to the dark one;
- without additional illumination in the visible range, the pupil is dilated and the features of the iris structure are not sufficiently visible.
In modern solutions, developers began to use white illumination to prepare the eye for registration, so that the pupil was narrowed, and the useful area of the iris became, if possible, the maximum size for building a high-quality biometric template. Despite this, all current solutions register the iris only in the infrared spectrum, which is why not all the information contained on the iris is used, which could be useful for more reliable and high-quality identification of an individual.
Decision
To control and manage the migration flow of people within the borders of our State, more accurate and reliable identification methods are needed than are currently used. It is possible to achieve a cardinal breakthrough in this direction by implementing:
- introduction of new high-precision solutions for biometric identification by iris;
- combining current facial identification solutions with high-precision biometric iris identification solutions.
According to the first point, a serious analytical breakthrough has already been made – a multispectral identification solution based on the iris pattern has been developed, when, in addition to the classical identification method in the infrared spectrum, registration is also carried out in the visible light range, which gives a multiple increase in identification accuracy. The advantages of this solution were demonstrated by the participants of the Skolkovo Foundation at the Interpoltech exhibition, which was held last year at VDNH. Image processing performed simultaneously in two spectral ranges makes it almost impossible to replace a living person with a graphic image, video recording or a dummy. Additionally, the presence and features of the pupil’s reaction to the external illumination of the visible range make it possible to unambiguously determine that identification is carried out by a living person. The brightness–modulated light is used to track the rate of change in the pupil diameter – a reaction to changes in external lighting. Individual characteristics of the pupils’ reaction to external light exposure allow us to assess the functional state of the identified person for: fatigue, stress, alcohol or drug intoxication, the use of specific medications. The iris of the eyes is the most stable and resistant to hacking biometrics, since the multispectral image of the iris pattern and the pupil’s reaction to light, at the moment and in the near future for several years, cannot be technologically faked.
As for the second point, the so-called bimodal biometrics, when identification is carried out simultaneously by two biometric features, was also demonstrated at the Interpolitech exhibition, where identification by both face and iris in the multispectral range is implemented in a single software and hardware complex.
I would like to emphasize that the technologies of identification by face and iris are ideally combined because the system first searches for a face on the recorded image and identifies it, then the eyes are algorithmically identified and then the process of identification by the iris of the eyes takes place. Such a solution is much more convenient for the user than bimodal solutions for the face and voice or for the face and the pattern of the veins of the palm, when additional actions are required from a person. Simultaneous application of two technologies on the face and iris of the eyes allows not only to increase the accuracy of identification results, but also to increase the speed of the system algorithms, which significantly reduces the requirements for the equipment used.
Result
To ensure the security of the State from external and internal threats associated with their anthropogenic sources, the widespread introduction of solutions based on the technology of bimodal identification by the face and irises of the eyes in the multispectral range into state and commercial systems will allow. This will make it possible to manage the flows of people by creating favorable conditions of existence for “desirable elements” and unfavorable conditions for “undesirable elements”, up to their immediate expulsion in the required direction. Control and management of these processes are important components of the defense of the State through a new defensive type of weapons – Migration. All the necessary developments for this are already there. And the methods of achieving the desired result will be discussed in further publications.
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