Janus: Safe Biometric Deduplication for Humanitarian Aid Distribution
Kasra EdalatNejad, Wouter Lueks, Justinas Sukaitis, Vincent Graf Narbel, Massimo Marelli, Carmela Troncoso
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2024 · Day 1 · Continental Ballroom 4
This talk introduces Janus, a novel privacy-preserving biometric **deduplication** system designed specifically for humanitarian aid distribution. Presented by Kasra EdalatNejad, this collaborative project between EPFL, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and CISPA addresses the critical challenge of preventing individuals from registering multiple times to receive aid, a practice that strains limited resources and reduces the number of people who can be helped. Traditional methods like phone numbers or government IDs often fail in conflict zones or areas lacking infrastructure, making biometrics a highly universal alternative. However, the creation of a centralized biometric database for vulnerable populations poses significant privacy and security risks, which Janus aims to mitigate.
AI review
Janus presents a groundbreaking privacy-preserving biometric deduplication system for humanitarian aid, tackling the critical dilemma of efficient resource allocation versus protecting vulnerable populations. By ingeniously combining homomorphic encryption, SMC, and TEEs with biometric fusion, it achieves unprecedented scale and accuracy while ensuring no single entity can compromise sensitive data. This is real-world impact driven by sophisticated engineering.