New technology creates faceprints

Just as a fingerprint is considered accurate identification, new facial recognition technologies are now creating reliable faceprints.

According to Newsweek, facial recognition technology can be extremely useful in areas such as consumer services and especially law enforcement.  In the case of crime prevention, for instance, airports employ facial recognition with the intention of identifying known suspects before they can escape the country.  Although the benefits of catching criminals are clear, it is imperative that the software can correctly identify a person with a high degree of accuracy.

As a form of biometric identification, facial recognition attempts to match features of a person’s face to a database. To do this, the software scans through images to find possible faces, and once it finds them, it can reorient or resize the image to make it more distinguishable.  At this point, it can look at unique features such as the space between the eyes, shape and size of the nose, and more to create a faceprint that is unique just like a fingerprint would be.

Although facial recognition is about 99.2 percent accurate under ideal circumstances, some limitations can be abused by someone that knows they are being filmed.

Lighting, for instance, is critical for allowing the features of the face to become apparent to a camera.  Even in a well-lit room, however, dark sunglasses and certain types of makeup can mask the identity quite easily.

Nonetheless, the technologies behind this identification process are becoming more and more effective and it is only a matter of time before it is perfected.