Forensics

Can We Improve National Security Using What We Know about Face Recognition?

Close your eyes and imagine being a passport officer at London Heathrow. There is a long line of slightly tired, irritated, and often impatient passengers aching to get to the end of their journeys. One by one they come to your counter and hand over passports with rather outdated photographs, looking at you for approval to reach their final destination. Different hair, glasses, sun tan, and a bit of weight gain or loss – the list goes on. It should be simple, though, to tell whether the ID and ID holder match. You have them both in front of you, the person and the image. Easy, right?

Well, not so much. Studies show that people are poor at recognising unfamiliar faces (ones we encounter for the first time, or have seen only briefly). This is true not only when we have to memorise the faces of new people, but also when the task is to compare images presented at the same time (such as matching a passport photo with a driver’s license photo).