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Date: 2001-09-28

Terror: Biometrics-Geier im Anflug


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In den USA hat das Rennen der Biometrics/ Produzenten um
Überwachungssystem für Flughäfen schon begonnen. Um 90
Prozent der gesuchten Personen zu finden, müsste bei
jedem dritten Flughafen/Besucher Alarm ausgelöst werden.
So sieht die Performance der Systeme momentan noch aus

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Face recognition useless for crowd surveillance By Thomas
C Greene in Washington Posted: 27/09/2001 at 19:44 GMT

Anyone offended by the Orwellian implications of using face-
recognition technology to scan airport crowds for terrorists
can take heart in the fact that the technology is, quite
simply, worthless in that situation.

As an authentication tool, used in controlled settings, face
recognition has real value. But even here we can expect a
false acceptance rate (FAR) of one in 250, according to
biometrics outfit FaceKey.

"This means that under controlled circumstances....you
could expect one false positive out of 250 people when face
recognition is used alone," FaceKey COO Annette
Starkweather told The Register. "FaceKey has combined
face recognition with fingerprint recognition to [achieve] a
FAR of one in 2.5 million," she added.

"Limiting access to secure areas in airports would be a
perfect application for biometrics," Starkweather says.

But in uncontrolled settings, such as we'd encounter in a
surveillance context, the performance of face recognition falls
to absurd depths.

This has actually been examined by the US Department of
Defense (DoD) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), which sponsored the Facial Recognition Vendor
Test (FRVT) 2000, the biggest and most well-known test to
date, Image Metrics COO Gareth Edwards told us.

"With indoor light, and a prior image taken at 1.5m camera-
subject separations and another taken at 2m camera-subject
separations, the best false detection rate (FDR) was 33 per
cent, with a false acceptance rate (FAR) of ten per cent."

This means that "to detect 90 per cent of terrorists we'd need
to raise an alarm for one in every three people passing
through the airport. It's absolutely inconceivable that any
security system could be built around this kind of
performance," Edwards says.

And yet, a biometrics company called Visionics is trying to
sell precisely that, rushing to capitalize on the recent suicide
hijackings in New York and Washington, as we reported
earlier. [...]

"Most worrying is the number of reports from people who've
seen working demos and 'field-trials' of these types of
systems. Many truly think that they offer an answer. [But]
when subject to raw, rigorous analysis, we've yet to see any
evidence that these systems offer any value. There's yet to
appear any plausible explanation of the results of the FRVT
test when compared with so-called 'field trials,'" Edwards
says.
[...]

Visionics has been sponsoring a public surveillance trial in
Tampa, Florida, with the stated goal of busting sex offenders
and pedophiles, two target groups which no one would rush
to defend. Now they're exploiting the terrorist threat, which in
recent weeks has become America's paramount fear.
[...]

A similar company, Viisage, which made headlines by
scanning crowds at last year's Super Bowl, is also eagerly
pursuing the airport surveillance angle, and has "offered the
FBI free use of their face-recognition technology to aid in the
apprehension or identification of the persons responsible for
the terrorism in New York City and Washington," for an
added marketing gimmick.
...
Afterwards, they can still haul in a nice profit selling
incremental 'upgrades' to victims who've invested millions and
can't justify backing out; and for an added bonus, they will
have become the 'DoubleClicks' of public biometric data,
which is sure to be a gold mine in itself.

full text
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21916.html
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edited by Harkank
published on: 2001-09-28
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