What is a Face Scan, Anyway?

More than 10,000 Olympic athletes and their coaches are having fingerprints and face-scans taken by UK officials around the world in the biggest operation of its type to prevent the London Games being targeted by illegal immigrants or terrorists. (The Independent - emphasis mine)

Did I miss a revision to the J-School style manual stipulating that photographs are henceforth to be called face scans?

Is this a British usage thing like calling flashlights torches, trucks lorries, and elevators lifts?

Let me try:

"Are those face-scans of your children? They're adorable!"
"I lost a ton of weight, so I put a new face-scan on my LinkedIn profile."
"I hate my drivers license face-scan."

How am I doing? What? Not good?

My friend from Purley assures me "that's not the way it's done back home," pointing out that this guy didn't say...

"Your wife interested in er... face-scanning, eh?"

My friend is correct!

No, I think "face-scans" is a term meant to communicate an author's disapproval of facial recognition technology without directly acknowledging bias. Wink, wink; nudge, nudge.



Public service: Here's the whole 'Candid Photography' clip at YouTube

See also:
The Politics of Biometrics: A Shibboleth, from the SecurLinx blog's early days.

h/t @m2sys