Cox News Service
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A new generation of surveillance camera soon will scrutinize the facial features of every passenger boarding at Palm Beach International Airport, and then compare them to a digital archive of known terrorist suspects.
In a few weeks, the airport will be among the first four in the nation to test biometric scanning, the latest weapon in the war against airborne terrorism.
From cheek to cheek and hairline to chin, each passenger’s features will be digitally dissected.
"Your face is like a big fingerprint," said Joseph Atick, CEO of the company lending the equipment for the test. "Instead of comparing lines and swirls, we’re comparing noses and eyes."
Atick’s firm, Visionics Corp., offered to lend the cameras and software for 30 days because Palm Beach is a mid-size airport, making the experiment more manageable.
Fresno-Yosemite International Airport is the nation’s only airport using Visionics’ technology under a pilot program that the federal government authorized. Palm Beach, Dallas-Fort Worth and Boston’s Logan International Airport will get it next. If successful, the equipment could be installed at Miami and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood international airports.
Visionics supplied the nation’s first public face-recognition cameras in Tampa’s Ybor City as part of a police surveillance system. Last week, the 7-year-old New Jersey company won a federal contract for a drug interdiction program.
If Palm Beach opts to buy the system, it could cost around $360,000 — $60,000 a camera for each of the six metal detectors now in use.
Passengers won’t know their mugs are being scanned as they approach the detectors. In a matter of seconds, the cameras take up to 15 pictures of each traveler. A computer digitally dissects the dimensions and proportions of 80 facial "landmarks" and instantly compares them with photographs of about 800 suspected terrorists whose pictures are supplied by the FBI.
A match of 14 landmarks sets off an alarm, subjecting a passenger to questioning.
The technology has set off alarms with civil libertarians.
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, says the screening subjects travelers to an unwarranted criminal lineup conducted by Big Brother.
Face-reading technology is a "fad" that’s not as accurate as its boosters claim, Simon said. Bad lighting, differing camera angles, changes in facial hair or age and even wearing glasses can skew comparisons, he said.
Simon also doubts the quality of the FBI database of terrorists. The 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 went undetected, and authorities most likely did not photograph them, he said.
"This is like trying to find a needle in a haystack without knowing what the needle looks like," Simon said. "You’re not going to have Osama bin Laden or Mullah Mohammed Omar walking through Palm Beach International Airport."
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