[wordup] Face Scanning Technology Proven Useless

[Adam Shand]

so much for the lighter tone :)  as much as i dislike this technology you
have to assume that it's still in early beta and will get better as time
goes by.

Via: The Eristocracy <Eristocracy at merrymeet.com>
From: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/23559.html
More: http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n010302a.html

Face recognition technology a proven farce
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 04/01/2002 at 18:57 GMT

Crowd surveillance kit using face recognition technology by Visionics has
been a comic failure in tests by the Tampa, Florida police, the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has discovered.

By leveraging the Florida open-records law, the watchdog organization
obtained system logs proving that the Visionics contraption has thus far
failed to identify one single crook or pervert listed in the department's
photographic database, while falsely identifying 'a large number' of
innocent citizens.

"The earliest logs provided by the department show activity for July 12,
13, 14, and 20, 2001. On those dates, the system operators logged fourteen
instances in which the system indicated a possible match. Of the fourteen
matches on those four days, all were false alarms," the ACLU notes.

The Tampa coppers started using the system in June of this year, and
abandoned it in August.

The Register was the first publication to report, back in September, that
face recognition technology is essentially useless in crowd-surveillance
situations. (We're glad to see the ACLU following our lead here.)

Unfortunately, a number of US airports are investing in the Visionics
technology and a similar scam kit from Viisage for window dressing to
reassure frightened passengers that terrorists can be caught by automated
cameras.

Anyone tempted to imagine that the airline industry, the FAA and the DoT
are in any way concerned about passenger safety should consult this
article by the New York Times, which reveals that the US Department of
Transportation "will not insist that [airport] screeners be high school
graduates, a requirement that would have disqualified a quarter of the
present work force of 28,000."

Happy trails.