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Heathrow To Install Facial Recognition Scanners
itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will recall that back in February, Heathrow airport required full body scanning for select individuals. Now we learn that the airport is installing facial recognitions scanners. The scanners will be used to capture passengers' faces before entering security checks and again before boarding. The stated goal is to prevent illigal immigration."
Illegal immigrants? Boarding a plane in UK to immigrate to...?
The same faulty stuff that has lead to cases of mistaken identity in the US, costing innocent people their drivers license?
RTFA: people flying in and then transferring directly in the transfers area to an internal flight to another part of the UK where there are less security checks on people coming in to the country. We have a number of smaller, regional airports.
Lots of paranoia in the UK about 'illegal immigrants'. Quite ironic seeing as the people who make the most noise about this are likely to be descended from illegal immigrants themselves ;-) Our whole country is basically immigrants if you look far enough back...
"The stated goal is to prevent illigal immigration"
Hopefully they can also stop bad spellers from entering the country.
Try to be an editor next time timothy!
"The departure lounge allows international and domestic passengers to be together so that the domestic passengers have access to the lounge facilities, according to BAA." ... which looks like a security design fail to me.
Still, what if I have a valid, selfbought ticket from Miami to Heathrow T5 with a connecting flight to some small local airport in the UK afterwards?
Sounds like what Honecker did in East Germany. Trying to prevent people from escaping the People's Democratic Republic of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland...
nt
You can't handle the truth.
If so, perhaps they could spend it on training their security helper monkeys to treat people as they are paying customers - not gonorrhea with legs. They behave like police in some kind of dystopian Deus Ex-like work. To cite one example, on a quiet day when there's barely anyone around, if a customer stops to ask you for information, "keep moving" is not an appropriate response. Lying just to get people out of your section nice and quickly is not good. That time I was looking for a smoke, and the cunts told me to go through security knowing full well that once I went I wouldn't be getting back out for a smoke before my transatlantic flight. If their unpleasantness is due to pressure placed on them by their employer then that needs to fixed. If they're acting like cunts because they are the kinds of people who are attracted to jobs in which they can pretend they're Judge Fucking Unaccountable Dredd then retrain them for checking vehicle tax discs or parking. We do not need these guys welcoming people to the UK. We couldn't possibly create a worse impression without installing a circle of frenziedly masturbating homeless guys at each departure gate, but even then between strokes they may offer more friendly directions when asked.
I believe the reason why they are claiming "illegal immigration" is to combat the issue of passenger switching. Essentially passenger A transits through the UK on their way to another destination - which means they have no legal right to leave the airport terminal. Passenger B buys an inter-EU/UK ticket, passenger A and B switch identities, and then A enters the UK illegally. Passenger B who was legal anyway just comes home using a second passport (normally issued by their native country before getting UK resident status).
That being said, I don't think the facial scanners will do jack shit to combat this. I think you'll have tons of false positive. I think their motivations are other than what they claim.
This seems like a really expensive & complex way to ensure the person checking in gets on the right flight.
Why can't they just put an identifying anti-tamper wrist band on each passengers as they check in, then check that at the gate. The band could be like the ones put on people instead of tickets at music festivals, or could be like a hospital bracelet. Either way, it could incorporate a barcode and and replace the existing paper boarding passes to make them very difficult to transfer.
Of course the tags will have to be made it look silver, gold or platinum to satisfy the business class passengers.
Next new airport security scanner, is going to feature automatic cavity searches don't forget to bend over. The sad part is that sentence doesn't even feel like a joke to me anymore when I see how many privacy violations and inhumane things goverments are putting their people through. It's just discusting I just finished reading this: http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/32-signs-that-the-entire-world-is-being-transformed-into-a-futuristic-big-brother-prison-grid. Is there any hope left for this stupid planet?
We need Blood Tests, To track down the solar cult bloodline.
If I remember this right (I've never actually taken a domestic flight, it's only something I've read) then they take a picture of domestic passengers at the security desk, the photo is brought up at the departure gate to verify the correct person is boarding the flight.
I remember there was some controversy when they were talking about using fingerprint scanners to do this, and how it was unnecessary because the "the photo system worked fine".
Racial recognition scanners.
Which wouldn't be all that different to what airports do now, come to think of it.
For the state to snoop on you like this.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Gatwick Airport already has em in both north and south terminals. They've been installed over the past few months (called Autogates) and still have a lot of bugs in the system. They dont always do what they should. People have successfully talegated others, failed to be recognised and recognised as somebody different (ie family member). Although when they work they are quite cool. Will be interesting to see how they pan out.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
I dunno if this is 'new' news - I travelled through Heathrow in March, and they did the face recognition thing to me then. Appeared to be Logitech 360 degree webcams installed about the place in perspex domes - but primarily at the passport check desk. You had to stand on an 'X' and wait for your pic to be taken & then passport checked. I was not asked to do this again when returning through - though I deliberately stood on the X waiting for the pic to be taken without being asked - the passport officer said no its ok we've already got your pic. Happened already, perhaps?
Never fly through LHR and LGW again without prosthetic forehead in place.
I jest, but more seriously, this news makes me glad that my travel patterns have changed such that I'm no longer flying through London.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I recall the paper that states that painting transformed haar-like features on the face completely dumbfound common face detectors/recognizer(i.e.based on Viola-Jones) Of cause more robust algo could be developed, but I doubt in industry ability and willingness to research and deploy them in foreseeable future(and spend money on them). More easy is to ban face paint.
At first I read it as "Racial". Fits right in with the hate speech article.
Unless they're trying to track the flying habits of the women from cumonherface.com.
Wait.. did I type "flying habits"? Maybe they're looking for Sister Bertrille..
Who, strangely, was modeled on the real life Singing Nun, Jeanine Deckers.
Where am I going with this?
Actually that is an example of something that is actually helpful. It's not too ridiculously expensive or unsafe (like bodyscanners using x-rays) and does not really invade your privacy too much (by showing naked pictures or something). I would welcome this system in American airports because it is possible for someone to open a door in a secure area and let someone else in. Really this is just an example of common sense.
You have to show your passport anyway, so obviously from that point on they know exactly who you are anyway. No-one seems to be up in arms about that, so what's the problem with facial recognition scanners?
Facial recognition is bad when used on CCTV in public places, because it permits the tracking of lawful activity (eg: finding out that person X went to Y political party's meeting).
But in an airport, you're showing ID to travel anyway. Even in the case of a false positive, you should be able to show your ID and clear things up quickly (false positives will be common, so even poorly trained personnel will be used to them).
Now, if you want to argue in favor of the right to anonymous air travel, that's a different story. I think that if security is really what we're after, there could be a system in place to permit anonymous air travel (at least when you're not crossing an international border).
I call bullshit. This stuff can't possibly work reliably.
Who approved the spend? Who got the contract. Yep. That's what I thought.
Besides, the Terrorism and Surveillance bubble is so over!
Call broker. Sell shares. Now! Sell them now! Now! Now!
Cutbacks are the new normal.
Gordon Brown will soon be looking under the cushions for gas money.
He'll be lucky to make payroll and pay the electric bill.
No place for giving insiders fat contracts for tech that does not work.
At first I thought it said installing *fractal* recognition scanners and was wondering if they were worried about people who had parts of them that looked like themselves.
Zurich Kloten was trialing something similar at passport control a few months ago (comparing face with picture held on chipped passports). Didn't work for me, and got the impression than staff helping people with the new procedure weren't impressed with it. No sign of it last time I went through a couple of weeks ago.
First off, let's just assume right off the bat that their stated goals are not their true goals. It's already obvious they don't even try hard enough to fabricate a real story.
Now let me tell you a story about their iris recognition systems.
10 years ago give or take, they started advertising their iris recognition system as a way of getting passengers through customs faster. I was interested in this since I travel in and out of the UK often and while it seemed like a good way to bypass long lines and interrogation, I was very concerned about the privacy implications of giving big brother biometric information that they could use to track me, eventually with something like the minority report surveillance cameras.
I kept seeing ads on tv and around the airport saying that this information would remain confidential, anonymized and would never be used for anything outside of the quick customs entry programmes. So I went to the office, read the brochures, asked questions and agreed to try it out after they assuaged my fears.
After using the system for a while, they stopped being available for use. In fact they were down so often in heathrow and gatwick that the 2 year grace period expired and I can no longer use the biometric entry lines.
Right after this happened, I noticed in the news that the uk government had gone back on it's promise to keep the data private and publicly declared that they were going to share everyone's iris maps and personal information freely around any and every government branch and do with my information whatever they pleased. Breaking all their promises and breaking all the contracts.
The moral of the story is regardless of what assurances are given or even how clearly they spell them out in their contracts, government will always abuse their powers to spy on you. Don't give them biometric information, don't let them film you and track you, don't believe their assurances they're all lies. It's not a slippery slope argument when you can find countless examples of things repeating over and over in the same pattern. By now you should already realize you're always arriving post haste at the bottom of this particular slippery slide.
Slashdot's War on Spelling continues unabated.
(Actually, truth be told, it's so unusual to see anything misspelled here.)
No need to freak out it is just the beginning. We still have some time before they start implanting chips into body.
before they start anything else? Heathrow is notorious für loosing luggage, even Monthy Python sung about that ages ago, and it has not improved since then...
blah "full body scanning" blah blah segue "facial recognitions scanners" blah? What?
Anyway, focusing on the new news:
Heathrow already takes a photo of users at security, these are then checked at boarding. The signs explain that the data is destroyed after boarding. This is done because passengers mix in the waiting (shopping) area between security and boarding. People have used this to switch from internal to external flights and vice versa (with a bit of creative thinking).
Move along people... this has been going on for ages. I had photos taken of me more than (yes, it's an *a*) 2 years ago when travelling to Ireland, which was then checked at the gate. Perhaps they are automating it now, big deal. I queried this way back, and was assured that the photos are deleted/destroyed after a short period of time (perhaps after the flight leaves, I can't remember). Not that I necessarily trust this information, but it's out there. People who have the urge are encouraged to write to Heathrow management as well as their MP to discover if this is, indeed, true.
"You have 20 seconds to comply"...