Face-Scanning Loses by a Nose in Palm Beach

Rio writes: "A story from myCFnow.com reports that Palm Beach International Airport officials said face-scanning technology will not become part of their airport's security system." Looks like the ACLU was right. Checking a database of 15 employees, the technology gave false-negatives -- failed to recognize the test subjects -- over 50% of the time. A spokesperson said, "There's room for improvement." The Pentagon said the same thing in February. The false-positive rate is more important -- it isn't mentioned, but even if it were just 0.1%, Bruce Schneier argues, it'd be useless.

Comments

what does this do

[vectus]

but delay its deployment for a couple years? this isn't really a victory at all.. I mean, I bet this will only delay the technology two years.. maybe less.

If anything, it should be a call for all Americans to protest this kind of thing (should you disagree with it).

Re:False Positives are OK

[Phroggy]

Actually, true story: I was at Fred Meyer's a few weeks ago (for those not fortunate enough to live in the Northwest, they sell pretty much everything, at decent quality and decent prices). In addition to my groceries, I'd picked up a pair of khaki pants. They've now got those self-checkout scanner things, in addition to the regular checkout lines, so I decided I'd try it. I didn't do so well. Anyway, in particular, I hadn't noticed that the pants had a security tag on them, and I neglected to remove it. I'm not sure how I would have removed it anyway, but the really large man keeping an eye on the self-checkout lines would surely have taken care of it.

So I cram the pants and half my groceries into my backpack, the other half in plastic bags. I leave. The alarm goes off. It occurs to me that the pants must have a security tag that I didn't remove. I glance around, and nobody even looks my direction. I proceed to leave the building.

Then I remember that I've forgotten to buy a bus pass. I go back in. The alarm goes off. I head over to the customer service counter, and shell out $56 for a little card that will enable me to get to/from work for the next month. I leave again, and the alarm goes off. I wait a few minutes for the bus, and go home.

I completely forget about the security tag until I'm wearing the pants and am on my way to catch the bus to work. I've gotten about a block when I hear a noise as I'm walking. Sure enough, there it is. I run home, try unsuccessfully to get it off, give up, change pants, and run to catch the bus. I arrive at work 15 minutes late. When I get home I finish mutilating the tag. Tough little buggers.

So anyway, the moral of the story is that those little tags are absolutely worthless if store security is asleep at the wheel.