The greatest problem facing those who seek to stamp out terrorism is determining
who the terrorists are, and stopping them in their tracks.
Discovering the identity of terrorists is as difficult as it always has
been; they don't walk around with T-Shirts identifying themselves as such, and
don't list 'Terrorist' as their occupations on passports. Finding out who they
are involves surveillance, undercover work and infiltration. All the skills
which covert government sponsored organisations are renowned for are used.
Stopping terrorists from acting has always been difficult. Working alone or in
small cells, it is difficult to determine when and where they will strike, and
hard to keep tabs on them as they move around, disguised, on false papers, or
just by being very secretive.
Catching a wanted or suspected terrorist in the street is hard to do. There is a
lack of manpower and it is just too easy for them to blend into busy, well
populated environments. The only places where it is possible to deal with them
on a one-to-one basis, is when they are boarding or disembarking from planes
and other forms of travel where their credentials may be checked.
Stopping terrorists from boarding planes, ships and gaining access to potential
targets is the last line of defence, but the most likely point for successful
detection. Unfortunately, the effort to check everyone going through the gates
of a busy airport or attending a famous tourist attraction is huge. It is
costly, time consuming and requires an army of professional 'spotters', who are
still prone to making mistakes.
Enter technology. Promising to take all risk out of the hunt for terrorism,
systems which are infallible will be welcomed by the public, make our lands and
peoples safe, and make the companies who have developed such systems rich beyond
their wildest dreams.
Governments need to reassure their citizens, and companies need to make money.
These two goals have brought those who make terrorist detection
systems close to those who can deploy them to assure people that everything
which can be done is being done, and that it's money well spent to ensure their
safety.
Companies are happy to tell us that their systems are as near 100% perfect as
they can be, and Governments and police forces are delighted to go along with
that view if it shuts up, and reassures a frightened public.
The capabilities of such systems, most notably using face recognition software,
is much less perfect than we are being told. It is not a panacea in the fight
against terrorism or crime, it is an emerging technology which has a long way
to go before it is useful or even practical in use.
Companies such as Visionics can't be blamed for
trying to make money out of their products and recoup the costs which their
developments have incurred, and jumping on the post-September band wagon was
to be expected. Police forces can't be blamed for seizing every weapon they
can lay their hands on in the fight against terror.
What is unacceptable are the claims, from both the manufacturers and those
deploying the systems, that face recognition is almost infallible. This is
misleading to say the least, dangerous at worse. It does nothing but offer
false hope and reassurance.
Governments and other authorities have been suckered in by the hype, and are
emptying their wallets into companies with face recognition systems, and
forcing the deployment of such systems upon us. Our taxes are being thrown
away on systems which don't work, and the benefactors are laughing as they
drag their sacks of gold to the bank.
Face recognition may be quite effective in laboratory controlled environments,
but in actual deployment situations they have been far from successful. A total
failure would be a fair analysis.
Visionics continue to push to have their face recognition systems installed and
many are happy to just believe everything Visionics say about how good they are.
Others are not quite so happy.
In a recent experiment, at Palm Beach International Airport, Visionics loaned
their equipment to the Palm Beach County authorities so that tests could be run
before it was fully deployed. The results, obtained and published by the
American Civil Liberties Union, were not what
they were hoping to see.
The ACLU Report
reveals many problems, not least that over half the people who should have been
flagged by the system slipped through the net undetected. The system has great
difficulty identifying faces when they are not looking directly at the camera,
when the lighting conditions are less than perfect, and can be fooled by those
who put on glasses or hats.
As well as failing to stop half of the 'terrorists', the number of false
positives, those who aren't terrorists but were identified as such, was around
the order of one per hundred; not a high figure, but one which would create
incredible delays and additional workload in a busy international airport
handling tens of thousands of passengers a day.
Palm Beach Airport has decided not to deploy the Visionic's system, and the
poor results adds more weight to those who have criticised this and competing
systems during other tests. Visionics say that the Palm Beach results are
flawed, citing airport lighting as one factor, and that there have been much
better results from tests carried out in other airports. The ACLU counters that
this is because those tests required test subjects to look directly into
cameras, and the Palm Beach tests were much more 'deployment realistic'.
The experience of the Tampa Police Department in Florida seems to confirm the
ACLU's claims that face recognition just doesn't work in practice. Visionic's
systems installed there failed to catch any known criminals while throwing up
a large number of false positives. Most mis-identifications were obvious to
human surveillance operators, including those where males and females were
confused, and where physical characteristics ( such as weight ) were
different to the actual criminal's details held on file.
So unsuccessful was the Tampa experience, that autmatic face recognition is no
longer used on a continuous basis.
The system used by Viisage Technology to
scan those attending the Super Bowl also fared no better.
It is encouraging for those who believe that CCTV, face recognition and crowd
scanning are an invasion of privacy to see that the technology is ineffective
and pointless, but it does nothing to dampen the fears that massive amounts of
money are being thrown down the drain on systems which do not work.
In the UK, where it is almost impossible to walk outside without being observed
by a CCTV camera, the dream of installing face recognition products is being
warmly embraced; driven on by reports of successful implementations in the
States [sic].
Even more money for the manufacturers, with little increase of protection for
the public; and we haven't even considered the impact on personal privacy,
human rights, and the valid extent of state control yet.
Face recognition systems may work better in the future, indeed they may become
perfect. For now, they are ineffective outside of controlled environments and
do nothing to prevent the activities which we fear.
False hope and pretend protection may subdue the public's concerns over
terrorism and criminal activities now , but could easily back-fire in the long
term.
An ensuing terrorist attack, despite face recognition being in place, may wake
everyone up to the flaws in the system and their false promises, however,
it would be terrible if terrorist attacks are needed to illustrate how
incapable the current systems are.
The Innocent Have Nothing To Fear
There is great concern over the deployment of CCTV, face recognition and
other surveillance systems deployed in the name of catching criminals.
Those who complain that this is an intrusion into their private lives, a
breach of their civil liberties, and against their human rights, are told
that the systems are in their own best interests and they have nothing to
fear.
The most common put-down for anyone who dares to question the encroaching
Big Brother mentality which descends down from the highest levels of
government is that, "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide,
or to fear".
It's therefore amazing the response which can be evoked when you follow these
people around with a camcorder; it's an easy way to give them first hand
experience of just how it feels to be under unwanted surveillance for no
good reason.
Do they like it ? No, they do not.
