News

ACLU: face-recognition tech not ready for prime time

September 3, 2003

BOSTON -- Facial-recognition technology failed to match identities in 38 percent of test cases among a group of employees at Logan International Airport, according to a study by the American Civil Liberties Union.

According to an article in The Boston Globe, other technology that scanned the eyes of airport employees entering secure areas to verify their identities was rejected recently by Massachusetts Port Authority officials, partly because some employees found it too intrusive.

Other technologies tested recently at Logan have been more successful and will soon be adopted permanently, including the installation of infrared cameras to detect intruders around the perimeter of the airport, and hand-held computers that state police can use to run background checks on people or to check license plates, the article said.

The facial-recognition technology, which was tested at Logan between January and April 2002 and rejected last summer, failed to detect employees who volunteered in the program on 95 occasions when they passed through checkpoints at two terminals, according to a study that the ACLU obtained from Massport under the Freedom of Information Act.

During the test, the photographs of 40 employees who volunteered for the program were scanned into a database. Cameras at two checkpoints at the airport relayed the images of everyone passing through to a computer, which compared them to the pictures stored in its memory. It used facial recognition technology to come up with a match.

The technology, provided by Viisage and Identix, successfully identifed employees 153 times, and falsely matched wrong people with the stored images three times, according to the study.

Bernard Bailey, Viisage president and chief executive officer, who was named head of the company after the Logan test was completed, said the technology is not ready for airports.

"I don't think that's the best use of our technology," Bailey said in the article. "The hype of this technology got way ahead of the capabilities of it."

Bailey said that the accuracy of airport facial scanning is hampered by the fact that scanning devices still have trouble coping with different lighting conditions and poses. Even changing the position of a person's head can cause an inaccurate identification.