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Face Scanning In US Airports Is Rife With Technical Problems (engadget.com)
Homeland Security's Inspector General has issued a report warning that its airport face scanning system is struggling with "technical and operational challenges." The report says that Customs and Border Protection "could only use the technology with 85 percent of passengers due to staff shortages, network problems and hastened boarding times during flight delays," reports Engadget. "The system did catch 1,300 people overstaying their allowed time in the U.S., but it might have caught more -- and there were problems 'consistently' matching people from specific age groups and countries." From the report: The watchdog also pointed out uncertainty about help from airlines, such as requiring them buy the cameras needed for taking passengers' photos. That represents a "significant point failure" for the face scanning system, the Inspector General said. As a result, the oversight body warned that Homeland Security might not make its target of having the face scanning system completely ready for use in the top 20 US airports by 2021.
Honestly, the US government is well known to blow a ton of cash on flawed technology implementations, even if the specific tech itself is otherwise well established and durable. They bought a recognition technology that doesn't work because #reason -- chalk it up to more wasted spending. The company engaged likely has some political or nepotist tie somewhere. /shrug
Flagged for racism.
such as requiring them buy the cameras needed for taking passengers' photos
Why would the airlines take the photos? Isn't passport control a job of the TSA?
Is it that hard to see where they were flying to, or for how long they overstayed? I can see some young couple from the EU saying "I know we're supposed to be gone friday, but what say we risk it all and spend another weekend here?", only to have facial recognition keep them off their flight Monday morning.
Face Sitting is not a problem for US lesbians.
Hasn't Israel been doing this for years? We should ask them for help.
How did you "overstayed at the airport" from "...overstaying their allowed time in the U.S...,."??? In a rush to post a comment and never bothered reading the rest of the sentence?
This just in! New face scanning technology isn't perfect, hasn't been perfectly deployed, and can still be improved. Airports are understaffed, and it's just not perfect. News at 11!
Why did they need face scanning to catch people overstaying their visa dates? And these people are already there to leave, so how does that help anything?
Now that the hardware is in, you define "points of failure." The industry isn't 100% behind you. The people don't want to have their pictures taken. Change the conversation from "do you want this hardware," to "do you want it to work correctly or just sit and waste money?"
Just another step in a fairly quick shift to lives monitored by systems and reported on by algorithms.
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Who controls the past controls the future - George Orwell
So 1300 people overstaying their visa (leaving the US at that point, as well - unless we want to put them in jail?). And almost 200 million spent on that program in 2017 alone (with 1 billion planned by 2025) What's the cost per visa overstayer? And what is the benefit to us, as a nation (other than another pork barrel for the DHS and their contractors)
All the ugly faces that the scanner have to look at on a daily basis is probably causing neural damage to the AI doing the bulk of the work.
Oh hell .... I went to the airport the other day and the computers crashed (after scanning my face).
People get to enter the USA for a set time. After that time they should exit the USA as was set out when allowed to enter the USA.
Using face scanning the USA can finally count every face that entered the USA legally and when they returned back to their own nations.
The time and date is very easy to understand and is set. Most other advanced nations have the same methods to then find and remove all people who overstay.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
A person who overstays after college is far less danger to the public than one random kid in a gang in a US High School. Spend the extra money on our schools.
Scanning a visa and/or passport at entry and exit can determine overstaying a lot cheaper and a lot more accurately than facial recognition. And it's already being done. So what is the facial recog actually for?
They must be using apple faceid or facepalm as I call it
But that means you'd have to deport Trump's wife, and probably her parents. They came here illegally.
"Because terrorism!"
Almost 20 years later, a panopticon severed from it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Come on, you overstayed and you are at the international airport about to board a plane to leave the country and you arrest them, why, just fucking why?!?
My concern especially with junk yard dog US law enforcers, is how secure are they, how hackable are they, did they even bother to secure them. One hack and that family boarding a flight are not terrorist and in the US that is extremely serious and dangerous, they are very likely to get shot, regardless of age or gender, just trigger happy fuckwits emptying their entire magazine into them because yeah, they are carrying phones on other things in their hand, that police all over world recognise but US law enforcers, whether they recognise them or call, claim they looked like guns, they felt threatened and they shot them as many times as they could, yeah mainly for the thrill kill and not because of fear.
So what has been to secure facial recognition systems to prevent hacking and false warnings and in the most the world being arrested and detained and missing your flight and in the US being shot and missing your life.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I imagine government-allied corporations are drooling over this: Government-enforced consumption. Technically, government demands the consumption of many things: Seat-belts and windscreen wipers for example but it doesn't demand that people buy brand X. That is what's likely to happen for these cameras since demand will be so low.
I used the kiosk face scanner one time. The problem was that the camera was positioned at the top of the kiosk so you had to look up, but the button to take the picture was at the bottom. It was almost impossible to take a good picture that way.
and there were problems 'consistently' matching people from specific age groups and countries."
So basically the system is ageist and racist
I think everybody is asking how useful it is to detect people overstaying *when they are leaving*!!!
You seem rather butt hurt that somebody might question this. It has nothing to do with whether enforcement of immigration is a good or bad idea.
A better explanation without your misconception of what is being asked: 1. it is useful for getting a count of how much overstaying is happening (huge amounts btw, many times the number of people sneaking across the border). 2. It could stop somebody who previously overstayed from entering again (ie they are detected the third time they are in the airport trying to get back in. 3. I think they could arrest you for overstaying, though that seems counter productive unless the person really was an extreme case.
Obviously this could be done with normal passport checking and not facial recognition, so it would be interesting to know if this is faster, more accurate, cheaper, or any other comparisons. Just saying a few thousand got caught does not tell me much.
If this was European pan optician facial recognition of everybody in the airport and not just travelers it might catch more. I can certainly see reasons that somebody overstaying would visit the airport, since they probably know some other people who are coming and going. But as far as I can tell they are not claiming they are doing that.
I've voted with my wallet and try to avoid the US when travelling transatlantic. The experience in US airports is usually horrible. Airports in other countries are often way more relaxed. I'd rather spend my money in countries that treat people with respect.
This type of intrusion and wholesale monitoring will create massive social problems. The juice isn't worth the squeeze for the average person, and we all know that. This is the people vs the government. You have to be pretty blind not to see it at this point.