Face-Recognition Technology Improves

[bear]

On Sun, 16 Mar 2003, Bill Stewart wrote:

> But there are two sides to the problem - recording the images of the
> people you're looking for, and viewing the crowd to try to find
> matches.  You're right that airport security gates are probably a
> pretty good consistent place to view the crowd, but getting the
> target images is a different problem - some of the Usual Suspects
> may have police mugshots, but for most of them it's unlikely that
> you've gotten them to sit down while you take a whole-face geometry
> scan to get the fingerprint.

I'm reasonably certain that a 'whole-face geometry scan' is a
reasonable thing to expect to be able to extract from six or eight
security-gate images.  If you've been through the airport four or five
times in the last year, and they know whose boarding pass was
associated with each image, then they've probably got enough images of
your face to construct it without your cooperation.

And if they don't do it today, there's no barrier in place preventing
them from doing it tomorrow.  Five years from now, I bet the cameras
and systems will be good enough to make it a one-pass operation.  I'd
be surprised if they don't then "scan" routinely as people go through
the security booths in airports, and if you've been scanned before
they make sure it matches, and if you haven't you now have a scan on
file so they can make sure it matches next time.

			Bear



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