In what legal and scientific experts say is a groundbreaking case, a San Francisco Superior Court judge allowed biometric facial-identification technology, along with accompanying testimony from an expert witness, to be admitted as evidence in a high-profile criminal trial.As pointed out here, biometric identity management systems are tools that work both ways. The technology can be used by defendants as well as prosecutors.
And in a curious turn, biometrics — the science popularized for its use in attempts to catch terrorists — was being used in San Francisco to try to exonerate an accused gang member and murderer.
This lengthy article, however, is pretty pessimistic about face-rec in general. To this point, I would draw attention to the fact that there is a huge difference between attended and unattended systems (a more complete resource for how to categorize different systems is here).
Several years ago, a surveillance experiment at a train station in Mainz, Germany, found that automated facial recognition had a success rate of only 60 percent during the day and as low as 10 percent at night, when poor lighting made identification more difficult.The system described in Mainz, above is an unattended system used on non-cooperative, non-habituated individuals in a public, non-standard environment. 60% is nothing to sneeze at and the proper frame of reference is 0% (the number of people identified in the absence of a system) not 100%. So, Mainz went from 0% identifications to 60% in the daytime (possibly) without any spending on human resources and this is failure?
Poorly calibrated expectations are a real issue in the biometrics sphere. We in the industry need to make sure that we are setting reasonable expectations for our customers and helping them to craft systems that meet their needs. We have an obligation to deliver value and an incentive to educate our customers.
