Interpol Pushing World Facial Recognition Database

The Register is reporting that according to some reports, Interpol will soon be pushing for a world-wide facial recognition database at the borders of all member nations. "The UK already has airport gates equipped with such technology, intended to remove the need for a human border guard to check that a passenger's face matches the one recorded in his or her passport. According to the Guardian, Interpol database chief Mark Branchflower believes that his organization should set up a database of facial-recognition records to operate alongside its existing photo, fingerprint and DNA files."

Comments

There Already Is One

[ewhac]

It's called "FaceBook".

Why do you think they have that "tagging" feature for the photos? Didn't you know all this time that you've been training their face recognition database?

Schwab

Re:There Already Is One

[OldSoldier]

I try to envision the right model for security and privacy as small town America. In this model everyone knows everyone else and for the most part, when you see your neighbor, he/she sees you.

Extrapolating this to the modern world, a world-wide facial recognition database would be compatible if the following additional conditions were met:
a) everyone had access to it (Everyone knows everyone else)
b) it was trivially easy to see where the cameras were (when you see me, I see you)
c) cameras were only in a relatively few number of places. (when I'm behind "closed doors" I'm out of public view)

I'm not convinced governments can abide by these above rules, but if they could I'd be OK living in a world-wide "small town".

Alternate Applications

[TripMaster Monkey]

I wonder how long it will be before this technology is utilized outside the airport gates...like, for example, with all of the myriad CCTV cameras currently infesting London.

What sort of resolution does this technology require? Could the technology be used on the CCTV images?

Obligatory John Woo...

[TiggertheMad]

...I want to take his FACE OFF...

No more drugs for this man!

So, jesting aside, how will this work with cosmetic surgery? Will celebrities getting cosmetic work abroad no longer be identified correctly? Will actual terrorists suddenly become interested in elective procedures just to fool the system? How will the system deal with the fact that people change as they age? Interesting questions.

I wonder if this will become a legitimate tool for law enforcement, or if it will be yet another big brother tool.

Ironic

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Seems ironic to me that we have the international law-enforcement agencies as well as a ton of cross-border data and system sharing agreements all intended to stop people from crossing the borders themselves. They want information about us to be world wide but they don't want us to be world wide.

Terrorist face recognition!

[Banekartr]

Does this facial recognition come with x-ray vision? How will it help with this? http://www.imcworldwide.org/blog/afghanistan/uploaded_images/IMG_0056-705316.JPG

Well, I'm screwed

[interstellar_donkey]

The Federal government has my photo from my passport stored somewhere.

It has my DNA from my stint in the Army.

It has has my fingerprints from security clearance applications and several FBI background checks I've had to go through to be a teacher.

My only solace is, in all of my photos for federal documents I'm frowning like an NFL star posing for a picture, and on all my Facebook pictures I'm smiling.

Though when it comes down to it, if the government goes to crap, I'm screwed.