Marketing Forces

In the absence of the right technology, marketing rushes in

By Scott Berinato

September 22, 2003 — CSO — After the 2001 terrorist attacks, interest in face recognition technology predictably surged. DARPA, NIST and other government research groups stepped up evaluations of the use of face recognition systems at airports and border crossings. Charles Wilson, a scientist at NIST wrote one of the resulting reports. "It says you need 10 flat fingerprints and a face for registration [creating your database] and two fingerprints and a face for identification," Wilson says. "NIST has no intention of changing that recommendation."

In other words, unless the government plans on getting its most wanted to sit down and offer a full set of prints and a straight-on head shot under photo-friendly lighting, face recognition probably isn't yet ready to help much in the fight against terror.

Still, airports and cities have gone ahead with trials of the technology anyway. Why? Wilson explains, "Science has one degree of optimism, marketing has another."

Marketing forces (not to be confused with market forces) have a persistently problematic relationship with IT. In the absence of a fully developed technology, marketing will fill the void the way air rushes violently into a vacuum. In this particular case, the vacuum was a black hole of dread in our national psyche. As a result, we, the marketers audience, probably embraced the marketing message more ardently than usual. Something had to stop terrorism. Face recognition that could pluck terrorists from crowded airport lobbies and concourses was a pleasing vision.

Two months after the attacks, even though the market clearly could not provide a viable face recognition technology, marketing forces were fully able to conjure ideal solutions. Given a wish that cried out to be fulfilled, vendors made overheated declarations about the technology's prowess. Some vendor CEOs shuffled off to Congress to explain (in the words of one vendor's press release) "how facial-recognition technology can be used to thwart the entry into the U.S. of persons who wish to carry out terrorist acts." Fresno airport put a system in and the city's mayor declared (again, in a vendor's press release), "This is a revolutionary advancement in public safety and it's a system every airport should have. The technology we now have in place will help prevent a repeat of the tragedies of September 11th."

Officials and vendors became a binary star system, held together by the same gravitational pull of glowing press. Public officials and agencies could declare they were doing something about terrorism; vendors could proclaim their patriotism by offering free trials of their wares. (Many were likely hoping that regulation would, down the line, drop a massive market right in their laps.)

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