Facial Recognition: Lights, Camera, Grandma

If we stop three terrorists from passing through an airport security checkpoint but let two through, are we winning the war on terrorism? Not so much. A four-month trial of two facial recognition products at Boston’s Logan International Airport found that the systems aren’t reliable enough to effectively screen passengers. And they also create a lot of work for screeners.

Facial recognition systems by Viisage Technology and Identix were set up at two screening checkpoints to spot 40 volunteer “terrorists” who agreed to have their photos scanned and added to a database of known terrorists, according to José Juves, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority.

Nearly 250 volunteer trials took place between the two checkpoints. Volunteers’ faces were matched with faces in the database 60 percent of the time, according to John Dorr, vice president of marketing at Viisage. While that’s not bad, it wasn’t good enough for Logan officials. “Facial recognition is promising, but it’s not the most effective means to do what we wanted, which is pick faces out of a crowd,” Juves says.

Results varied widely depending on variables such as lighting and camera angle. In addition to inconsistency, the systems were a burden for operators, who had to man the stations diligently to find a match, according to a report by Counter Technology, which coordinated the study.

For the time being, Logan officials are shelving facial recognition and other biometric screening tools in favor of a more proven alternative: humans. The airport has trained state police officers in behavior pattern recognition, the method used by security staff at Israeli national airline El Al. “It has proven effective, and it’s not dependent on a photo database of terrorists,” Juves says.

But the Israeli system requires El Al passengers to arrive for their flights three hours in advance. The Israelis also use ethnic and behavioral profiling to spot everything from mulesunwitting accomplices who carry lethal devicesto suicide bombers. And if you have an Arabic last name or appearance, prepare to get interrogated.