FBI says facial recognition not ready for prime time
An FBI expert said that facial recognition does not figure in the FBI’s biometric strategy; he said facial recognition could have been a killer application — but it cannot; “The algorithms just do not exist to deliver the highly reliable verification required. This is even though the FBI has been evaluating facial recognition technology since 1963,” he said
A senior FBI technologist declared last month that after decades of evaluation, the agency sees no point in facial recognition. Speaking at last month’s Biometrics 2009 conference in London, James Loudermilk II, a senior level technologist at the FBI, outlined the agency’s future biometrics strategy. He said that 18,000 law enforcement agencies contribute fingerprints and DNA samples to the FBI’s databases and, at their peak, they submit 200,000+ identity verification queries a day. It’s a big operation, and it’s only going to grow, he said.
David Moss writes that under the Next Generation Identification initiative, an iris print database is likely to be added to the existing fingerprint and DNA databases.
Fingerprints are likely to be amplified with friction prints of other ridges, probably palm prints and maybe footprints. Voiceprints are also being evaluated. Anything that can feasibly increase public safety.
Loudermilk said his aim was to get the current turnaround time for laboratory staff from DNA sample to profile down from 8 to 10 hours to 1 hour. He said the technology was there already, it was a question of feeding it down the levels of law enforcement to every precinct booking station. Once the agency gets turnaround time to an hour, then perhaps the idea of sampling an entire planeload of passengers starts to look feasible.
What will be missing from this mix, however, is facial recognition. Facial recognition would be the killer application of biometrics, Loudermilk told the hundreds of conference delegates, and the FBI would dearly love to be able to use facial recognition in its fight against crime.
It can not, though. The algorithms just do not exist to deliver the highly reliable verification required. This is even though the FBI has been evaluating facial recognition technology since 1963, he said. It did not invest then. It is not investing now.
Moss writes that despite the FBI’s rubbishing of the technology, delegates from other policing agencies and vendors queued up to declare their intention to introduce facial recognition or claim the technology worked. These included Alex Lahood of the U.K. Border Agency. He reiterated former Home Secretary John Reid’s pledge to check the identity of everyone entering and leaving the United Kingdom by 2013. When asked how, he said, probably face recognition and fingerprints.
