The Los Angeles Police Department is currently testing facial-recognition software on handheld computers reports Wired. Capt. Charles Beck of the LAPD says the facial recognition is like having a mobile electronic mug book.
The LAPD has been using two computers donated by their developer, Santa Monica company Neven Vision, which wanted field-testing of its technology. The computers are still considered experimental.
The ACLU is skeptical of facial recognition. Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California said the technology was unproven and could encourage profiling on the basis of race or clothing. Facial recognition technologies can zero in on faces from live video or stills and look for matches in giant databases like The Matrix
Other experiments with facial-recognition software have had mixed results. At Boston’s Logan International Airport in 2002, two systems failed 96 times to identify people who volunteered to help test it. The technology correctly identified 153 other volunteers.
DHS in October adopted its first biometric facial recognition standard, which supports visual human-facial comparison and computer automated comparisons for watch-list checks.
This standard was developed by the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), a standards-development organization accredited by the American National Standards Institute. The standard is expected to facilitate the interchange of photographs across systems and assist in the future development of interoperable biometric applications.
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