The Miami Heraldonline
Posted on Tue, Jun. 29, 2004
A new facial-recognition system to help spot terrorists trying to enter the United States may not work: Faces are hard for computers to read.
BY NORA ACHRATI
nachrati@krwashington.com
WASHINGTON - New high-tech passports once expected to be in use by October have been delayed at least a year, and, according to screening-technology specialists, may never provide the hoped-for level of protection against terrorists.
The main reason is that the key to the passports -- facial recognition -- requires technologies that even proponents say are difficult to implement and are not yet reliable.
Facial recognition wasn't the choice of personnel screening experts, who generally favor fingerprints. It was picked by the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization, based in Montreal, which sets international travel standards. The United States and 27 other countries intend to use the new ''biometric'' passports.
The new passports, which would replace existing passports as they expire, will come with embedded chips containing digitized versions of passport photos. They're intended to be machine-read and compared against existing libraries of terrorism suspects and criminals. They'll also be used to confirm the identities of passport holders.
Biometrics are aspects of the human body that can be measured: fingerprints, voiceprints, retina and iris patterns, and hand geometry, as well as facial recognition. Congress and the Homeland Security Department wanted to start issuing such passports by this fall.
The U.N. agency concluded in May 2003 that facial recognition, which requires of international travelers only that they allow their pictures to be taken, was a less offensive form of biometric screening than fingerprinting, iris and retinal scans or voiceprints.
NOT CONVINCED
''Is the face a reliable biometric? The generally accepted answer is no,'' said Takeo Kanade, a facial-recognition pioneer and proponent at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The U.N. agency rejected fingerprints, a proven technology with a vast existing library of specimens worldwide, because fingerprinting is associated in many countries with committing a crime. Iris and retinal scans screen with exceptional accuracy, but the organization worried that the process would be intrusive and uncomfortable.
''The very important thing was to find one globally interoperable biometric, to be used everywhere around the world,'' said Denis Chagnon, a spokesman for the organization. That meant facial recognition, he said, because ``People are used to pictures. They are not intrusive.''
ADDITIONAL SAFEGUARD
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., the federal agency for measurement issues, challenged the U.N. agency's decision. Officials from the institute urged Congress to require that U.S. passports include two fingerprints, one from each index finger, as a supplement to facial recognition. Congress adopted this standard -- the International Civil Aviation Organization's recommendation is a minimum standard -- and will encourage other countries to do the same. If they don't, there won't be much security enhancement.
Biometric chips will be required for the 27 countries that participate in the so-called visa waiver program, which permits visitors to enter the United States as tourists or short-term visitors without visas.
The waiver system is reciprocal: U.S. citizens who visit visa-waiver countries don't need visas either.
In addition to the United States, participating countries are: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.