Friday, April 25, 2008

More biometric bollocks from the British government

So now Britain is introducing a pilot scheme at British airports, where a facial recognition system attempts to automatically confirm that you have the same face as the one that is stored as biometric data in your new passport.

Aside from the the obvious big reason why biometric ID is a bad idea, there is another problem with this new scheme. You see, the last time I checked with somebody who knows a bit about facial recognition technology and has done some work in the field (viz. me) I found out that the current state of the art in the field is, to put it bluntly, shit.

But what about this pearler - "The technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of "false negatives". I'll bet it bloody will - but I'll also bet that their definition of a 'small number' is different to mine!

4 comments:

Jake Stacey said...

Now, there's an idea.

Biometric bollock prints.

I can see it now: lines of people getting ready to teabag a member of HM Borders & Immigration (or whatever they're called now).

Of course, it would disadvantage about half the population, but hey, it's what the Saudis do, eh?

Jake Stacey said...

(Um, disadvantage half the population, rather than have compulsory teabagging. If that were the case, the lines for immigration would no doubt be even longer)

Alun said...

I must admit, while I knew that the Saudi's have a dodgy record on human rights, I was unaware of all the forced teabagging that goes on over there...

Hope you're well, Shakey!

Unknown said...

Teabagging would take care of half of the population, but what's the female equivalent? Actually, best not go there ;-)