Facial Scanning Now Arriving At US Airports (npr.org)

According to a report via NPR, a Geneva-based company called SITA that develops information technology for the world's airlines has installed facial scanning cameras at Orlando International Airport. "Britain-bound passengers -- some wearing Mickey Mouse T-shirts and other Disney paraphernalia -- lined up at Gate 80 recently for the evening British Airways flight to London's Gatwick Airport," reports NPR. "It looks like any other airport departure area, except for the two small gates with what look like small boxes on posts next to them. Those boxes are actually cameras." From the report: Sherry Stein, a senior manager at SITA, says the cameras are triggered when passengers step onto designated footprints. "We collect a photo, send it to CBP, who checks to make sure that person is booked on the manifest and matches the photo that they already have on file." If everything matches, Stein says, "we open the doors and give them the OK to board." All that happens, she says, "in three to five seconds." If things don't match, the traveler's passport is scanned manually by a gate agent. CBP is testing biometric scanning at a dozen or so U.S. international airports to ensure that people leaving the country are who they say they are, and to prevent visa overstays. The Transportation Security Administration, another agency within the Department of Homeland Security, is testing similar devices at security check-in lines.

Comments

Epic fail

[davecb]

No matter how good a percentage you have (below 100%, of course), the birthday paradox will give you a ton of false positives.

It's because you're actually doing N*(N-1) comparisons, where N ::= (the number of passenger a day at the airport + the number of crooks you're looking for). For a probability of 1-(1/365) (ie, 99.7% accuracy), you get a 100% chance of a false positive after 367 people... see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The German security service supposedly identified somebody's grandmother as a terrorist, and stopped the experiment abruptly.