tiana

now what is this i hear about some facial recognition program....i would love to see a us resident be asked to be photographed and then wait to be compared to a huge database in order to enter their own country.....what would they compare it too....? all this security drama is confusing me.....

tiana

oh just saying i dint understand what people are saying about facial recognition technology .......like how would they make that work .....what if you had a nose job or something like that since your first picture on your documents...wouldnt that be confusing?

DRZ

'Be asked' to be photographed? Heck, just walk in the building.

Ask someone that has been accused of cheating at a major casino.

TSO1973

You walk into a facility like an airport, casino, whatever, there's no asking if you're picture can be taken. It's going to be taken. Anyplace that you know has surveillance cameras, you have to assume your face is going to end up on one of them.

RadioGirl

I assume the OP's question is related to this thread about passport photos, which included the following:
In answer to tiana's question, the facial recognition program would compare a photograph of the passenger taken as they stand at the customs desk to the photograph in their passport, not to a "huge database". It's an automated version of the same thing that happens when the custom officer looks at you and compares what s/he sees to the photo in your passport. The passenger puts their passport in a scanner and then looks into a camera; the computer compares the photo on the passport to the image taken by the camera.

tiana

oh ok i get it but to me a human person could do that just as well as a program or even better i would think....

yyzvoyageur

I suppose they'd just do a manual comparison, taking into account the fact that you claim to have had a nose job since your photograph was last taken for your passport. Of course if your appearance has changed drastically since your passport was issued, it's always a good idea to get it replaced. It never ceases to amaze me when I see people travelling with passports that show them when they were 100 kg heavier or 3-year-olds who had their passport photograph taken at 2 days of age (can't really blame the child, but I digress).

YVR Cockroach

The technology isn't new. Been talked about for at least 20-30 years (relative distance between eyes, tip of nose, among other parameters.) I am sure the British police use it in CCTV which they cover most of the urban U.K. with. They can start scanning from once you disembark the a/c.

tev9999

Facial recognition software looks for the geometry of the face such as the distance between the corners of the eyes, or shape of the nose, etc. Those are things that don't change, or are difficult to change (plastic surgery). Humans can be easily fooled by hair changes, makeup, weight loss/gain. Theoretically the technology should eliminate false positives, like an agent questioning you because you are long haired blond in your passport photo but a short haired redhead in person. Of course all technologies can be used for good or evil.

Centurion

<<The technology is not new...> The technology may not be new but the fact that you can buy it and it is being used everywhere is new.

What is new is for a less than a couple hundred dollars a consumer can by an off the shelf camera with facial recognition that will remember people in your photos. What is even older is Apple computer comes witha facial recognition program that any child can scan your entire Apple computer photo album.

What you do not hear that much is the advances in facial recognition systems used by NSA, CIA, and some US customs (sorry TSA..haha).

RadioGirl

Human beings need to be paid, so they cost more money, over the long run, than machines. This is similar to replacing human check-in agents with OLCI or check-in kiosks.
Good facial recognition software uses dimensions that don't change (much); the distance between your eyes, the height of your head, etc. (Not saying CBP uses good software, though...) And I assume there would be a human as a backup if the software couldn't confirm a match.
You're right that it isn't new and about the sort of parameters. But the OP is talking about a controlled photo at customs, not about crowd surveillance, which is harder with less control over position, distance, lighting, etc.

cordelli

Tampa rolled it out nine or ten years ago, and dropped it a couple years after that as it was a complete failure.

The goal was scan people on the street. Constantly run against known people you are looking for. System tells you when there's a match.

It's sort of like what many police departments are doing, driving around OCR'ing license plates of every car they pass constantly checking for ones they are looking for, only for faces.

Last year the FBI started a trial running all the driver license pictures in North Carolina against the database looking for known people who may be using a new name.

I figure in the course of a day my picture/video is taken several hundred times, if not way more then that. I would be a complete fool not to think it's constantly being run against some database just in case. I once counted 150 cameras on the way from the office to home, and those were just the ones I saw.

bajajoes

It would seem to me that all this similar or same name problems that get people on the No Fly List could be immediately rectified with Facial Recog Cameras.
Those 3 yr old alleged, possible terrorists out there COULD be saved a lot of hassels. Or is that asking too much from tsa or DHS?@:-)

reft

Not without building another database.

Facial recognition should not be needed to determine the threat level of a 3yr old.

Fredd

Oh boy, one more expensive piece of technology to screw up our lives...

A fraud prevention system erroneously revoked his license, and now he’s suing for his hardship

John H. Gass hadn’t had a traffic ticket in years, so the Natick resident was surprised this spring when he received a letter from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles informing him to cease driving because his license had been revoked.

“I was shocked,’’ Gass said in a recent interview. “As far as I was concerned, I had done nothing wrong.’’

After frantic calls and a hearing with Registry officials, Gass learned the problem: An antiterrorism computerized facial recognition system that scans a database of millions of state driver’s license images had picked his as a possible fraud.

http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-1...system-license