Biometric modality: Face – use cases
Examples of 1:1 verification applications
- Face images have been used by law enforcement to help verify the identity of criminals for more than a hundred years. The face is routinely photographed from a number of angles when a person is brought into custody. These custody images or ‘mugshots’ are then filed for future reference to verify identity or as investigation aids including ‘one-to-many searches’ (see next section below).
- Face images have also been universally adopted for border security with hundreds of millions of e-passports having been issued globally that include facial images on secure electronic chips. The actual photo of the face can be compared with the face of the person presenting the travel document manually by a border official. However, this traditional process is becoming increasingly automated with the widespread adoption of e-gates at international ports and travel hubs. Facial recognition software is used to compare the face image stored in the passport chip with the passenger’s face image captured by the camera mounted on the e-gate. These fully automated biometric systems can handle and expedite large volumes of passenger traffic as well as having higher consistent levels of face recognition accuracy than human adjudicators.
- With the explosion in the popularity of ‘selfies’, face recognition is now being expanded to commercial and consumer payment use cases and to access devices. Software to organise PC-based photo collections is adding to the awareness of this technology.
Examples of 1:N identification applications
- Face images obtained by police from convicted criminals are now being used to construct watch lists for live face recognition monitoring in public spaces. These collections may be themed, for example, persons wanted for offences, escaped prisoners etc. Face identification is also used, in a more traditional and retrospective search context, for generating leads during the investigation of a crime. The increasing use of facial recognition technology has created more demand for facial image comparison practitioners as they are often required to make the final decision on the output of a FR system.
- Similarly, passport facial images are being searched at the border to identify potential criminals/terrorists from images sourced from law enforcement datasets. Face recognition is also becoming more prevalent at airports in an effort to streamline and expedite passenger movement through the check-in, security and boarding processes.
- Retail outlets are exploring the use of face images of persons who have previously used unacceptable behaviour in their store(s) (for example, theft, verbal abuse, physical assault) to monitor those entering the premises as a preventative measure.
- Some companies have been trawling online sources to collate extremely large collections of face images in order to sell these to private companies or law enforcement agencies as ready-made databases (Refer to the Biometrics Institute Good Practice Framework B.2.1 and B.5.1).
Face key considerations | Face overview | Other modalities
