Sitting Down with Rob Jenkins

I recently connected with Rob Jenkins, a lecturer at the University at Glasgow and leading authority of facial recognition technology in the UK, to pick his brain about different topics in facial recognition, namely airport security, the future of biometric technology and privacy/related concerns.

Rob had some very insightful, innovative answers to my questions, and I'm excited to share them with the growing IHF readership. Going forward, I'm hoping to have other thought leaders and readers contribute content and commentary to this blog, as I'd like to make this more of a forum for biometric, facial recognition and other technology discussions rather than a one-sided conversation. Feel free to make comments on any of the responses or questions, and I will be sure to address them!

Also, check out Rob's departmental Web site for selected publications on gaze perception and other facial identification topics. Very interesting stuff.

In response to Manchester Airport lowering their matching thresholds, The Telegraph quoted you saying that lowering the passport match level to 30 percent would make the system almost worthless. Another perspective is that the previous levels were causing horrendous queues and customer dissatisfaction. Is there a middle ground here?

There is certainly a middle ground in the sense that we can choose where to strike a balance between rejecting genuine matches and accepting false matches. But reducing either type of error generally increases the other, so it’s a trade-off. There is no ‘sweet spot’ where both types of error are reined in.

Despite the advanced nature of this technology, do you believe that there should still be a human element involved in security checks? If so, do you believe we will ever reach a point where this will no longer be necessary?

The main problem with referring the difficult cases to humans is that humans cannot do the task reliably either - even if we’re trained and experienced. Humans are fantastic at matching familiar faces, but our performance with unfamiliar faces is very poor. If we can somehow incorporate the benefits of familiarity into the technology, then it could be transformed.

Facial recognition technologies are popping up all over -- club entrances, bathroom faucets, online photo services, using cameras in lieu of passwords to access computers -- have they hit the tipping point? Is it only time before we use the technology to unlock our front doors and open our car trunks? What trajectory do you see it taking? Staying in security-based deployments, infiltrating everyday life or a balance between the two?

To some extent I think a tipping point is being ushered in, mostly by people who have something to sell. And it is an idea that some sectors are keen to buy into. So in that sense there is a lot of good will wishing the technology to work. I don’t find the gadget market especially troubling, provided that errors are of relatively little consequence. The real danger is in rushing to large-scale security deployments. For applications such as passport control or forensic face recognition the stakes can be much higher, and we know that the available technology is not yet up to the task.

In the same vein, has facial recognition reached a point where accuracy and reliability now line up with the media's expectations?

In my experience, identification errors tend not to go down well with the public. I often ask audiences how often they would be prepared to be the subject of a misidentification. The answers are in the order of once a decade, even when the imagined consequences are minor. That’s a tall order, given the number of identity checks that some proposals entail. It comes as something of a shock when these demands are compared against current capability. As far as media expectations are concerned, I think there has been a change in tone. Traditionally, the emphasis has been on the implications face recognition for privacy, with the unspoken assumption that it is reliable. These days there is more of an awareness that the technology simply is being phased in, whether it works or not. That changes the focus of the debate.

The "Big Brother" argument -- that citizens are losing their individual privacy rights due to increased public security efforts -- is always present in a discussion about surveillance. Is there a point at which facial recognition and biometric technology infringe on personal freedoms and the right to privacy? Is blurring faces enough? Are there places where surveillance should not be allowed?

I don’t think facial recognition and biometric technology necessarily infringe on privacy. It is certainly possible to imagine applications where privacy concerns don’t arise. However, for the security and surveillance applications that have been at the forefront of public discussion, the tension with privacy is fundamental. The whole purpose of identifying someone is to connect them with some other information, and the nature of that information is a major issue. We can think of face recognition as a key to identity. But focusing on the key tends to distract us from other questions, like What’s behind the lock? As more and more information is stored behind the lock, the reliability of the key becomes increasingly important. As does the question of who has access to the key.

The practice of blurring or pixellating faces to protect identity (as in Google Streetview) is often poorly informed. Although such manipulations can make it more difficult for observers to identify people, this is only the case when the observer is unfamiliar with the faces concerned. When the observer is familiar with the face, blurring or pixellating the image does surprisingly little to impede identification.

People have very different ideas about where surveillance should be allowed, and which places should be out of bounds. I don’t really foresee any wide agreement on the extent of coverage that is desirable or acceptable. The general trend is for rapid expansion, especially in the US and the UK, but my impression is that this trend is not driven by public demand.

The UK has over 4 million cameras -- that's one for every 14 people in the country and 200,000 in London alone. Chicago is working to improve its 'Virtual Shield' and include the entire metropolitan area in its surveillance grid to cut down crime. Yet, criminals still often get away with murder -- literally. Are expectations set too high? Are surveillance grids more of a scare tactic in preventing crime from happening rather than proactive in catching criminals in the act?

It has been known for some time that the unprecedented CCTV coverage in the UK has had little or no effect on crime rates. A recent Home Office report revealed that only 3% of crimes were solved using CCTV footage, and suggests that simple improvements to street lighting would be more effective. Part of the problem is that it is unrealistic for police to monitor CCTV footage on the scale that it is produced. But more importantly, little thought has gone into the use of CCTV evidence in court. It has only recently become clear how poor humans are at matching unfamiliar faces, even when the images are far higher quality than could be obtained from CCTV. We’ve already looked at machine performance in this context. Establishing a match that will stand up in court is very difficult indeed.

The deterrent argument is interesting because the figures imply little or no deterrent value in CCTV. The standard explanation for this is that people assume the cameras are not working, which is a reasonable inference to make if they are not reducing crime. However, I wonder if there is also a paradoxical effect of increasing coverage. After all, the more cameras there are, the less likely it is that any particular camera is being monitored.

IHF Roundup: Robots Hitting the Crop Fields, Airport Facial Scanners Slowing Security Lines & Other Top Headlines This Week

Phewf! Finally catching my breath after the whirlwind of ISC West and sitting down to read all the headlines that hit this week.

Lots in the research fields -- literally, fields -- in the news this week. I actually wrote about this robotic work a few weeks back, but the AP reported more on MIT's work with robots that can water, harvest and pollinate cherry tomato plants. According to the article, each plant is connected to both a robot and computer network to enable sensors that know when it is time to water the plant, pick the ripe fruit, or need fertilizer. This is the first big initiative I've heard about using robots for agricultural purposes, and while its currently exclusive to tomatoes, I'm curious if the technology will be adapted to other fruits and vegetables moving forward.

Biologists are hitting the books and looking at old laws of flying to further understand how birds, insects and other winged-animals keep themselves in flight in order to apply to future biomimeric-flying robots. Using high-speed video to see the asymmetrical flapping that hummingbirds and others are capable of to make turns mid-air, they hope to apply these locomotive maneuvers to future robotic developments.

And from wildlife and agriculture to babies -- Japanese scientists have created a child robot with Biomimetic Body (CB2 for short) capable of developing social skills from continuous human interaction. The robot can watch and record facial expressions using embedded eye-cameras and match them to corresponding physical movements to understand emotion, mirroring a developing mother-baby relationship. Wow.

In the surveillance realm, some feathers being ruffled this week, particularly in the UK.

According to a leaked memo, Manchester Airport allegedly re-calibrated its facial scanner machines from alerting security personnel if the passenger had less than a 80% likeness to their passport photograph to only calling out matches at less than 30% due to an overwhelmingly high number of "false positives" and particularly long queues at checkpoints. However, the UK Border Agency responded, saying that "neither the software nor the machines have been recalibrated or changed since the trial began in August 2008." Either way, lines are apparently out the door and there are rumors that 30% thresholds aren't high enough to tell Winona Ryder from Osama Bin Laden. If that's the case, I'll have no problem getting through as Colin Firth (if I had his passport, that is).

As noted by Leischen Stelter of Security Director News, biometric technologies, like facial scanners, address challenges airports face in providing the utmost security to its passengers, and more and more airports are adopting various technologies to do so. Whether its access control, iris and fingerprint readers or facial scanners, biometrics are enabling greater confidence in airport security efforts. In fact, the Biometric Airport Security Identification Consortium (BASIC) was initiated last year to test many different biometric technologies at airports nationwide and has grown from six initial participants to 32 airports. BASIC will move this one step further and present its findings to the TSA, which has promised to provide an approved vendor lists going forward. Exciting stuff.

Standardization in video surveillance has been an ongoing issue, but camera regulation is another rising matter, particularly down under. The Victorian Law Reform Commission in Australia proposed that an independent regulator oversee all public surveillance to ensure no footage is recorded without authorization. With tens of thousands of surveillance devices across the state, it is vital that no video falls through the cracks and into the wrong hands. Great to see.

So many headlines to summarize every week that it's almost getting overwhelming! I'm going to aim to summarize important headers a few times next week and moving forward -- hopefully this will keep everything timely and ensure I don't miss anything. Wouldn't want to let the readers down.

Manchester Airport Downgrades Matching Threshold on Facial Scanners

Those customer complaints about excessive wait times and congestion going through security in the UK must be piling up these days -- in a leaked memo, Manchester Airport allegedly re-calibrated its facial scanner machines from alerting security personnel if the passenger had less than a 80% likeness to their passport photograph to only calling out matches at less than 30%.

Deemed an "unacceptable" security risk by some, this change was prompted by an increased number of "false positives" not recognizing law-abiding passengers as the person pictured in their passport.

There has been no official explanation as to why the change occurred, and some facial recognition experts are up in arms, claiming that using a 30% match threshold is essentially useless. A memo noted, "[The fact that] the machines do not operate at 100% is unacceptable. In addition it would be interesting to know why the acceptance level has been allowed to decrease."

As another article also describes, with such low calibration levels, Kevin Spacey and Winona Ryder would easily pass through holding Osama Bin Laden's passport. With these odds, I bet could pass through security as Colin Firth, no problem.

I'll be interested to see if an official response to this "leaked memo" is released that explains the drastic drop in standards and their reason for the large number of false-positives. It could be the result of their technology choice, or just the result of poor, old, and varied photos common to passports. Likely both.