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Heathrow To Install Facial Recognition Scanners

Posted by timothy on from the don't-get-punched-in-the-nose dept.

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."

14 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. immigrants by Evtim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Illegal immigrants? Boarding a plane in UK to immigrate to...?

    1. Re:immigrants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah we have to limit all these britons trying to get out of their island to settle in a civilized part of the world. :)

    2. Re:immigrants by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, we've had facial recognition cameras in Heathrow for about five years - I was tangentially involved with the group setting them up. Possibly this is an upgrade - the previous ones could be defeated if you smiled. Fortunately, Heathrow is designed in such a way that smiling is unlikely for anyone unfortunate enough to be there.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:immigrants by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Funny

      Please do (Aussie here).

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    4. Re:immigrants by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2

      Fortunately, Heathrow is designed in such a way that smiling is unlikely for anyone unfortunate enough to be there.

      Nothing fortunate about that. Just clever design.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    5. Re:immigrants by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2

      Actually, we've had facial recognition cameras in Heathrow for about five years - I was tangentially involved with the group setting them up. Possibly this is an upgrade - the previous ones could be defeated if you smiled. Fortunately, Heathrow is designed in such a way that smiling is unlikely for anyone unfortunate enough to be there.

      I guess smiling at the airport gets you automatically declared suspicious, then?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    6. Re:immigrants by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2

      Moreover, this can be easily solved by having national and international destinations start from different terminals. So if you arrive at T5 from an international flight, you can get to other international flights from T5, but have to go e.g. to T3 in order to get a follow-up flight to Manchester. And of course to get from T5 to T3, you have to go through passport control.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    7. Re:immigrants by Captain+Hook · · Score: 2

      This is Slashdot. 95% of the readership's experience with air travel involves interacting with the American TSA once a year while they're flying from their mom's basement in Boston to Comic-Con.

      You've got to hand it to those Airline Pilots, they do have a lot of skill, I can't imagine the precision needed to land a 747 in a back garden, then taxi in through the patio doors, through the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement.

      --
      These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
    8. Re:immigrants by tick-tock-atona · · Score: 2

      He said civilized. (Brit here)

      You outed yourself as an uncivilised US-ian there.

    9. Re:immigrants by xenobyte · · Score: 2

      Actually the whole security theater should make everybody laugh out loud - if it wasn't so stupid it hurts.

      Basically it doesn't work. Never did actually. The error rate (missed alerts) is so high it's ridiculous. The luggage scanner finds about 8% of the targets, the passenger metal detector (the portal thing) finds about 45% of the targets (of those a whopping 85% are missed in the follow-up wand screening), the carry-on scanner finds about 30% of the targets, the 'porn-scanner' is quite good - relatively - as it finds about 60% of the targets, but the 'grope-search' finds less than 25% of the targets.

      Basically, the huge failure numbers are often due to obvious false alerts causing the true target to be dismissed.

      The only way to catch terrorists with 100% certainty involves a time machine... but profiling helps. It would have caught all the 9/11 hijackers, while the scanners would not have caught their carbon fiber boxcutters... the 'porn-scanner' might, but not if they hid the knives inside their body.

      --
      "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
  2. Hmm ... by lennier1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The same faulty stuff that has lead to cases of mistaken identity in the US, costing innocent people their drivers license?

  3. Re:Devils Advocate by gnasher719 · · Score: 2

    I think you'll have tons of false positive

    You mean false negatives? According to the description, they take a photo of you, then check that the person leaving with your flight ticket is actually you. A "false positive" would be a different person leaving with your ticket, but wrongly identified as you and accepted. A false negative would be you leaving legitimately but not recognised as matching your own photo. Very easy to have a living person check that you are the right person.

  4. Re:RTFA: elsewhere in UK where less checks by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 2

    South Africa doesn't get a free pass, since the cradle of mankind is to be found in central Africa, along Rift Valley, if I recall correctly, so you might give the Kenians a pass here.

    --
    Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  5. Re:Maybe this is the problem by Malc · · Score: 2

    So they can expose all customers to the same retail obstacle course? The owners of LHR have repeatedly shown that they only care about shopping. They don't care about passenger comforty, snow clearance equipment, etc. It's hard to find a good bookshop squeezed in amongst all the high end shops found 40 mins away on the Picadilly Line on Oxford and Regent Streetd