Canon's eye-based biometric photo watermarking system

[FLiPMaRC]

Pretty cool tech-news

Canon's eye-based biometric photo watermarking system hits the Patent Office - Engadget



Image attribution is big business on this tangled web of ours, but embedding digital watermarks into images is a costly and time-consuming procedure for most photographers -- which is why this Canon patent application is so intriguing. The filing describes a "Registration" mode for digital cameras that embeds biometric data captured from your iris in the image automatically as a watermark -- you simply set yourself as one of up to five users, look into the viewfinder for a moment so the camera can scan your eye, and start taking photos. The system embeds the metadata in batches to avoid slowing the camera down while you're out in the field, and it sounds like the system can be modified to simply generate a verification code instead of a true watermark, preserving image quality. Of course, this is just a patent application, so there's no word on when or where we might see this tech pop up, but you know photographers will be all over this when it finally hits.

Patent link: United States Patent Application: 0080025574

[Rhys]

Pretty cool tech-news



Patent link: United States Patent Application: 0080025574

Publicity-grabbing gimmick!

When so many systems rely upon biometric data for security, it's likely that ID thieves will buy the images just to steal your biometric data in order to commit fraud.

[FLiPMaRC]

Interesting take on the technology Rhys I haven't really thought of biometrics as a security risk.

[faisal]

Doesn't biometric mean that the human part that you are scanning (finger, eye etc) needs to be part of a living human....
thats what I remember from the IBM Biometric finger scanner....no one got cut your finger off and access your laptop......

[FLiPMaRC]

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

[FLiPMaRC]

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