"Airport anti-terror systems flub tests"

Tuesday, September 2, 2003

Airport anti-terror systems flub tests
By Richard Willing
USA TODAY


Camera technology designed to spot potential terrorists by their facial
characteristics at airports failed its first major test, a report from the
airport that tested the technology shows.

Last year, two separate face-recognition systems at Boston's Logan Airport
failed 96 times to detect volunteers who played potential terrorists as they
passed security checkpoints during a three-month test period, the airport's
analysis says. The systems correctly detected them 153 times. 

The airport's report calls the rate of inaccuracy "excessive." The report
was completed in July 2002 but not made public. The American Civil Liberties
Union obtained a copy last month through a Freedom of Information Act
request. 

Logan is where 10 of the 19 terrorists boarded the flights that were later
hijacked Sept. 11, 2001.

The airport is now testing other security technology, including infrared
cameras and eyeball scans, spokesman Jose Juves says.

Face recognition works by matching faces picked up by surveillance cameras
with pictures stored in computer databases. Relationships between a face's
identifying features, such as cheekbones and eye sockets, are converted to a
mathematical formula and used to make a match. 

In the Logan Airport experiment, photographs of 40 airport employees were
put into a database. The employees then attempted to pass through two
security checkpoints where face-recognition cameras were used. 

The ACLU opposes facial recognition because it says the government can use
the technology to invade citizens' privacy.

"But before you even get to the privacy concern, there's a fundamental
question about our security," says Barry Steinhardt, who specializes in
privacy issues at the ACLU's national office in New York. "The thing just
plain doesn't work."

A spokesman for one of the companies whose system was tried at Logan Airport
says the test was not a fair measure of the technology. Meir Kahtan of
Identix of Minnetonka, Minn., says the technology is far better suited for
"one-to-one" identification, such as comparing photos on passports or
driver's licenses, than random searches of photo databases.

A government test in 2002 found that face-recognition systems scored correct
matches more than 90% of the time when used for such one-to-one
identifications.

A spokesman for Visage Technology of Littleton, Mass., the other company
that failed the Logan test, declined to comment.

The Logan Airport report is the latest piece of bad news for a technology
that was once touted as the state-of-the-art method for picking faces out of
crowds. Last month, Tampa police announced that they were shutting down
face-recognition cameras because they had failed to make any matches during
a two-year test period. The cameras, which were mounted in a popular tourist
area, were designed to match pictures captured at random against stored
photos of wanted suspects and runaway children. Virginia Beach, police, who
have operated a similar system for the past year, reported no matches as of
July.

The Logan experiment was the largest test of facial-recognition technology
made public. The technology has also been tested using smaller groups of
volunteers at airports in Dallas/Fort Worth, Fresno, Calif., and Palm Beach
County, Fla., with similar results. 

The Transportation Security Administration, which is responsible for
passenger screening, has tested other airport security technology but has
not made results public. Phone calls requesting comment on the Logan Airport
test were not immediately returned.

Kelly Shannon, spokeswoman for the State Department's consular affairs
office, said the Logan Airport results would not affect plans to use face
recognition to enhance passport security. Beginning in October 2004, the
United Kingdom, Japan and 25 other countries whose nationals are permitted
to travel to the USA without visas are required to convert to passport
photos that are compatible with face-recognition systems.

Attached Photo:

Tampa became the first city in the United States to install the FaceIt
software in June 2001 to scan faces in Ybor City.

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