WASHINGTON: If you’re a frequent international traveler, and you find yourself flying into Washington, DC’s Dulles airport a lot, then your headshot might start showing up in a government database. You haven’t done anything wrong at least, we hope not but odds are good that you might be randomly selected for a quick picture.
According to Motherboard, US Customs and Border Protection rolled out a new initiative starting, whereby random Americans entering the U.S. might get their headshots taken as part of a new program designed to ferret out potential imposters.
“The operational goals of this pilot are to determine the viability of facial recognition as a technology to assist CBPOs in identifying possible imposters using US e-passports to enter the United States and determine if facial recognition technology can be incorporated into current CBP entry processing with acceptable impacts to processing time and the traveling public while effectively providing CBPOs with a tool to counter imposters using valid U.S. travel documents,” reads U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s official “Privacy Impact Assessment” document.
If you’re the lucky recipient of a free headshot, a customs officer will run a software analysis of your picture and compare it against the picture of you that’s stored on your e-passport’s data chip. A score will be generated based on the similarities (and differences)if you don’t match, that might clue in the customs officer that some additional steps could be necessary to confirm that you’re really you. It won’t give you a green flag through customs if you pass, and it’s not necessarily going to be a red flag if your new look doesn’t match your passport photo.
“The facial recognition system is a tool to assist CBPOs in the inspection process. The tool does not replace officer discretion at any point within the inspection process,” reads the aforementioned Privacy Impact Assessment.
That still might not be enough, however, to pacify those who envision a Gattaca-like future where automated, law enforcement facial recognition plays a much bigger role in everyday life.
