Your Face Is Not a Bar Code:

Arguments Against Automatic Face Recognition in Public Places

Philip E. Agre

Department of Information Studies

University of California, Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California 90095-1520

USA

pagre@ucla.edu

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/

Copyright 2001 by Philip E. Agre.

Version of 10 September 2003.

5700 words.

An abridged version of this article appeared in Whole Earth 106, Winter 2001, pages 74-77.

Given a digital image of a person's face, face recognition software matches it against a database of other images. If any of the stored images matches closely enough, the system reports the sighting to its owner. Research on automatic face recognition has been around for decades, but accelerated in the 1990s. Now it is becoming practical, and face recognition systems are being deployed on a large scale.

Some applications of automatic face recognition systems are relatively unobjectionable. Many facilities have good reasons to authenticate everyone who walks in the door, for example to regulate access to weapons, money, criminal evidence, nuclear materials, or biohazards. When a citizen has been arrested for probable cause, it is reasonable for the police to use automatic face recognition to match a mug shot of the individual against a database of mug shots of people who have been arrested previously. These uses of the technology should be publicly justified, and audits should ensure that the technology is being used only for proper purposes.

Face recognition systems in public places, however, are a matter for serious concern. The issue recently came to broad public attention when it emerged that fans attending the Super Bowl had unknowingly been matched against a database of alleged criminals, and when the city of Tampa deployed a face-recognition system in the nightlife district of Ybor City. But current and proposed uses of face recognition are much more widespread, as the resources at the end of this article demonstrate in detail. The time to consider the acceptability of face recognition in public places is now, before the practice becomes entrenched and people start getting hurt.

Nor is the problem limited to the scattered cases that have been reported thus far. As the underlying information and communication technologies (digital cameras, image databases, processing power, and data communications) become radically cheaper over the next two decades, face recognition will become dramatically cheaper as well, even without assuming major advances in technologies such as image processing that are specific to recognizing faces. Legal constraints on the practice in the United States are minimal. (In Europe the data protection laws will apply, providing at least some basic rights of notice and correction.) Databases of identified facial images already exist in large numbers (driver's license and employee ID records, for example), and new facial-image databases will not be hard to construct, with or without the knowledge or consent of the people whose faces are captured. (The images need to be captured under controlled conditions, but most citizens enter controlled, video-monitored spaces such as shops and offices on a regular basis.) It is nearly certain, therefore, that automatic face recognition will grow explosively and become pervasive unless action is taken now.

I believe that automatic face recognition in public places, including commercial spaces such as shopping malls that are open to the public, should be outlawed. The dangers outweigh the benefits. The necessary laws will not be passed, however, without overwhelming pressure of public opinion and organizing. To that end, this article presents the arguments against automatic face recognition in public places, followed by responses to the most common arguments in favor.

Arguments against automatic face recognition in public places

* The potential for abuse is astronomical. Pervasive automatic face recognition could be used to track individuals wherever they go. Systems operated by different organizations could easily be networked to cooperate in tracking an individual from place to place, whether they know the person's identity or not, and they can share whatever identities they do know. This tracking information could be used for many purposes. At one end of the spectrum, the information could be leaked to criminals who want to understand a prospective victim's travel patterns. Information routinely leaks from databases of all sorts, and there is no reason to believe that tracking databases will be any different. But even more insidiously, tracking information can be used to exert social control. Individuals will be less likely to contemplate public activities that offend powerful interests if they know that their identity will be captured and relayed to anyone that wants to know.

* The information from face recognition systems is easily combined with information from other technologies. Among the many "biometric" identification technologies, face recognition requires the least cooperation from the individual. Automatic fingerprint reading, by contrast, requires an individual to press a finger against a machine. (It will eventually be possible to identify people by the DNA-bearing cells that they leave behind, but that technology is a long way from becoming ubiquitous.) Organizations that have good reasons to identify individuals should employ whatever technology has the least inherent potential for abuse, yet very few identification technologies have more potential for abuse than face recognition. Information from face recognition systems is also easily combined with so-called location technologies such as E-911 location tracking in cell phones, thus further adding to the danger of abuse.

* The technology is hardly foolproof. Among the potential downsides are false positives, for example that so-and-so was "seen" on a street frequented by drug dealers. Such a report will create "facts" that the individual must explain away. Yet the conditions for image capture and recognition in most public places are far from ideal. Shadows, occlusions, reflections, and multiple uncontrolled light sources all increase the risk of false positives. As the database of facial images grows bigger, the chances of a false match to one of those images grows proportionally larger.

* Face recognition is nearly useless for the application that has been most widely discussed since the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington: identifying terrorists in a crowd. As Bruce Schneier points out, the reasons why are statistical. Let us assume, with extreme generosity, that a face recognition system is 99.99 percent accurate. In other words, if a high-quality photograph of your face is not in the "terrorist watch list" database, then it is 99.99 percent likely that the software will not produce a match when it scans your face in real life. Then let us say that one airline passenger in ten million has their face in the database. Now, 99.99 percent probably sounds good. It means one failure in 10,000. In scanning ten million passengers, however, one failure in 10,000 means 1000 failures -- and only one correct match of a real terrorist. In other words, 999 matches out of 1000 will be false, and each of those false matches will cost time and effort that could have been spent protecting security in other ways. Perhaps one would argue that 1000 false alarms are worth the benefits of one hijacking prevented. Once the initial shock of the recent attacks wears off, however, the enormous percentage of false matches will condition security workers to assume that all positive matches are mistaken. The great cost of implementing and maintaining the face recognition systems will have gone to waste. The fact is, spotting terrorists in a crowd is a needle-in-a-haystack problem, and automatic face recognition is not a needle-in-a-haystack-quality technology. Hijackings can be prevented in many ways, and resources should be invested in the measures that are likely to work.

* Many social institutions depend on the difficulty of putting names to faces without human intervention. If people could be identified just from looking in a shop window or eating in a restaurant, it would be a tremendous change in our society's conception of the human person. People would find strangers addressing them by name. Prospective customers walking into a shop could find that their credit reports and other relevant information had already been pulled up and displayed for the sales staff before they even inquire about the goods. Even aside from the privacy invasion that this represents, premature disclosure of this sort of information could affect the customer's bargaining position.

* The public is poorly informed about the capabilities of the cameras that are already ubiquitous in many countries. They usually do not realize, for example, what can be done with the infrared component of the captured images. Even the phrase "face recognition" does not convey how easily the system can extract facial expressions. It is not just "identity" that can be captured, then, but data that reaches into the person's psyche. Even if the public is adequately informed about the capabilities of this year's cameras, software and data sharing can be improved almost invisibly next year.

* It is very hard to provide effective notice of the presence and capabilities of cameras in most public places, much less obtain meaningful consent. Travel through many public places, for example government offices and centralized transportation facilities, is hardly a matter of choice for any individual wishing to live in the modern world. Even in the private sector, many retail industries (groceries, for example) are highly concentrated, so that consumers have little choice but to submit to the dominant company's surveillance practices.

* If face recognition technologies are pioneered in countries where civil liberties are relatively strong, it becomes more likely that they will also be deployed in countries where civil liberties hardly exist. In twenty years, at current rates of progress, it will be feasible for the Chinese government to use face recognition to track the public movements of everyone in the country.

Responses to arguments in favor of automatic face recognition in public places

"The civilized world has been attacked by terrorists. We have to defend ourselves. It's wartime, and we have to give up some civil liberties in order to secure ourselves against the danger."

Once we transcend automatic associations, we can think clearly about the choices that face us. We should redesign our security arrangements to protect both security and civil liberties. Among the many security measures we might choose, it seems doubtful that we would choose the ones that, like automatic face recognition in public places, carry astronomical dangers for privacy. At least any argument for such technologies requires a high standard of proof.

"But the case for face recognition is straightforward. They were looking for two of the terrorists and had photographs of them. Face recognition systems in airports would have caught them."

More importantly, security procedures at the Boston airport and elsewhere were so shoddy, on so many fronts, that a wide variety of improvements would have prevented the hijackings. If you read the white paper about the hijackings from the leading face-recognition company, Visionics, it becomes clear that face recognition is really being suggested to plug holes in identification systems. Terrorist watch lists include the terrorists' names, and so automatic face recognition is only necessary in those cases where the government possesses high-quality facial photographs of terrorists but does not know their names (not very common) or where the terrorists carry falsified identification cards in names that the government does not know. In fact, some of the terrorists in the recent attacks appear to have stolen identities from innocent people. The best solution to this problem is to repair the immensely destructive weaknesses in identification procedures, for example at state DMV's, that have been widely publicized for at least fifteen years. If these recent attacks do not motivate us to fix our identity systems, then we are truly lost. But if we do fix them, then the role that automatic face recognition actually plays in the context of other security measures becomes quite marginal.

That said, from a civil liberties perspective we ought to distinguish among different applications of face recognition. Those applications can be arranged along a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are applications in public places, for example scanning crowds in shops or on city streets. Those are the applications that I propose banning. At the other end of the spectrum are applications that are strongly bounded by legal due process, for example matching a mug shot of an arrested person to a database of mug shots of people who have been arrested in the past. When we consider any applications of automatic face recognition, we ought to weigh the dangers to civil liberties against the benefits. In the case of airport security, the proposed applications fall at various points along the spectrum. Applications that scan crowds in an airport terminal lie toward the "public" end of the spectrum; applications that check the validity of a boarding passenger's photo-ID card by comparing it with the photo that is associated with that card in a database lies toward the "due process" end of the spectrum. The dangers of face scanning in public places (e.g., the tracking of potentially unbounded categories of individuals) may not apply to applications at the "due process" end of the scale. It is important, therefore, to evaluate proposed systems in their specifics, and not in terms of abstract slogans about the need for security.

"All of the people in our database are wanted criminals. We don't store any of the images that our cameras capture, except when they match an image in the database. So the only people who have any cause for complaint are criminals."

(1) We have to trust your word that the only people whose images are stored in the database are wanted criminals, and we have to trust your word that you throw away all of the images that fail to match the database.

(2) You don't really know yourself whether all of the people in the database are criminals. Quality control on those databases is far from perfect, as the database of "felons" that was used to purge some Florida counties' electoral rolls in 2000 demonstrated.

(3) Even if the only people in the database today are criminals, the forces pushing us down a slippery slope of ever-expanding surveillance are nearly overwhelming. Once the system is established and working, why don't we add alleged troublemakers who have been ejected from businesses in the past but have never been convicted of crimes? Then we could add people with criminal records who have served their time, people who have been convicted of minor offenses such as shoplifting, people with court orders to stay away from certain places, prisoners, parolees, gang members, soldiers, people with court summonses for minor offenses such as unpaid parking tickets, foreigners who have outstayed their visas, all foreigners in general, people with a history of mental illness, people who are wanted as material witnesses, missing persons, children whose parents are worried about them, elders whose children are worried about them, parents who are behind on their child support, employees of the businesses where the system is operating, rich people who are afraid of being kidnapped, alcoholics who want to be kept out of bars, and other individuals who have signed contracts agreeing to be tracked. And once those people are added, it is then a short step to add many other categories of people as well.

"In effect you're saying that face recognition won't work, and that we should ban it because it will work so well. You are contradicting yourself."

"Public is public. If someone happens to notice you walking in the park, you have no grounds for complaint if they decide to tell someone else where you were. That's all we're doing. You don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place, and I have a free-speech right to communicate factual information about where you were."

The phrase "reasonable expectation of privacy" comes from a US Supreme Court decision. The phrase has been widely criticized as useless, simply because reasonable expectations of privacy in a situation can disappear as soon as someone starts routinely invading privacy in that situation. The problem is an often-exploited ambiguity in the word "expectation", which can mean either a prediction (with no logical implication that the world morally ought to conform to it) or a norm (with no logical implication that the world actually will conform to it). In arguing in favor of a ban on automatic face recognition in public places, one is not arguing for a blanket "right of privacy in public", which would be unreasonable and impractical. Rather, one is arguing for a right against technologically mediated privacy invasions of certain types. Technological mediation is key because of its continuous operation, standardized results, lack of other legitimate purposes, and rapidly dropping costs.

The argument about free speech rights is spurious because the proposed ban is not on the transfer of information, but on the creation of certain kinds of electronic records. You still have the right to communicate the same information if you acquire it in other ways.

"Providing proper notice of cameras in public places is easy. In Europe, many public places are plastered with signs that read 'This area monitored by CCTV'. What is the problem?"

"Automatic face recognition is not all bad. It has positive uses. For example, as the technology gets miniaturized you could put a device in your glasses to remind you of people's names when you meet them. No doubt our inventive society will come up with other positive uses as well. Don't stigmatize the technology as simply a tool of oppression."

"You can't outlaw technology. The technology will get out there anyway."

"The real solution is to make sure that everyone is subject to surveillance. Once society is completely transparent, the powerful won't be able to use technology for repression, because their repressive scheming will be under surveillance too."

"Automatic face recognition stops crime. Police say they want it. By automating some of their more tedious jobs, it will free them to allocate their limited resources more effectively. And if it prevents one child from being killed then I support it."

"I've been in the military and the police, and if you had seen some of the things that I've seen then you would change your mind."

"Why are you anti-law enforcement? The only thing that's keeping you, your families and your property safe is a robust law enforcement system. Without law enforcement your belongings would be stolen in no time."

"Your arguments are scare tactics. Rather than trying to scare people with scenarios about slippery slopes, why don't you join in the constructive work of figuring out how the systems can be used responsibly?"

"Liberty is not absolute. It is reasonable for the government to curtail liberty to a reasonable degree for the sake of the collective good."

"The technology doesn't create anything new. If the government wants to follow you around now, they get plain-clothes cops to do it. The technology may make following you cheaper, but it doesn't make anything possible that wasn't possible before."

"What are you talking about? Your face already is a bar code. Everyone's face is unique, and people can use your face to recognize you. That's all the technology does."

"The evils that you envision are all speculative. This technology has not hurt anybody, and you can't go imposing a death sentence on it without evidence that it's dangerous."

Nor can there be much doubt about the potential for abuse. We have abundant precedents from other technologies, and the burden is really on the person who would argue that automatic face recognition in public places will be an exception to these precedents. Databases will leak, technologies will exhibit function creep, information will be diverted to secondary uses, law enforcement will make use of technologies originally designed for other purposes, repressive governments will make use of technological advances pioneered in relatively free societies, and people's lives will be disrupted by quality control problems in the data. The argument here is not that automatic face recognition in public places will turn society into Orwell's 1984 overnight, or at all. The harms from automatic face recognition will develop slowly because the technology will not be deployed instantaneously, and because institutions change slowly. But the danger is great enough, and backed up by enough history and logic, and will be hard enough to reverse if it does materialize, that we are justified in acting now.

"When an automatic face recognition system produces a match, it is not the judge, jury, and executioner. If your name comes up wrongly, you'll be cleared in the same way that you'd be cleared after any other sort of mistaken identification. Automatic face recognition may not be perfect, but it's a lot more accurate than identification by human beings, and I don't see you trying to outlaw that."

"Privacy prevents the marketplace from functioning efficiently. When a company knows more about you, it can tailor its offerings more specifically to your needs. Of course if you ask people whether scary face recognition systems should be banned then they'll say yes. But you're asking the wrong question. The right question is whether people are willing to give up information in exchange for something of value, and most people are."

"A preoccupation with privacy is corrosive. Democracy requires people to have public personae, and excessive secrecy is unhealthy."

"What do you have to hide?"

For more responses to bad arguments against privacy, see: http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/arguments.html

Discussion of face recognition in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

comments advocating the use of face recognition in public places

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/06/national/06SURV.html?pagewanted=print

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/16_15/state/17338-1.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53844-2001Oct25.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14273-2001Sep23.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/19/nyregion/19TECH.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/16/nyregion/16SECU.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/15/national/15CIVI.html

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-7141717.html

Biometrics in Airports: How To, and How Not To, Stop Mahommed Atta and Friends

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/BioAirports.html

Biometrics: Facing Up to Terrorism

http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP218/

Biometrics: A Look at Facial Recognition

http://www.rand.org/publications/DB/DB396/

Passports and Visas to Add High-Tech Identity Features

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/national/24IDEN.html?pagewanted=print

Consistent Security Is Elusive Airport Goal

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13786-2002Feb15.html

European Commission's Proposal on Biometric Identifiers

http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc;=IP/03/1289|0|RAPID≶=EN&display;=

Viisage Director Takes Homeland Security Post

http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=VISG&script;=410&layout;=0&item;_id=330130

skepticism about face recognition's use for preventing terrorism

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56878,00.html

http://www.reason.com/0210/fe.dk.face.shtml

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,54423,00.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/25400.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/20/business/yourmoney/20PROF.html?pagewanted=print

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/science/physical/15FACE.html

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5101223,00.html

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20011220.html

http://ComputerBytesMan.com/facescan/presentation/index.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/07/magazine/07SURVEILLANCE.html?pagewanted=all

News articles with background on face recognition.

Face-Recognition Technology Improves (March 2003)

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/14/technology/14FACE.html

Facial ID Systems Raising Concerns About Privacy (August 2001)

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12629-2001Jul31.html

Smile, You're on In-Store Camera (August 2002)

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,54078,00.html

New Side to Face-Recognition Technology: Identifying Victims (June 2002)

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/science/physical/15FACE.html

Your Face-Scan Dollars at Work (August 2001)

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,46018,00.html

Facial-Recognition Tech Has People Pegged (July 2001)

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/07/17/face.time.idg/

Face Scanners Turn Lens on Selves (July 2001)

http://wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,45687,00.html

article about a biometric industry public relations initiative (September 2001)

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,46539,00.html

How Facial Recognition Software Finds Faces (July 2001)

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/CuttingEdge/cuttingedge010706.html

Law Enforcement Agencies Working on 3D Face Recognition Technology (September 1999)

http://asia.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9909/24/3d.face.recognition.idg/

Face-Recognition Technology Raises Fears of Big Brother (February 2000)

http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0%2C1249%2C150015975%2C00.html

Smile, You're on Scan Camera (March 2001)

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42317,00.html

Face Recognition Via Cell Phones (March 2002)

http://www.internetnews.com/infra/print.php/999361

Other sites with background information on face recognition technology and its potential for privacy invasion.

Electronic Privacy Information Center Face Recognition Page

http://www.epic.org/privacy/facerecognition/

Coalition Declares December 24, 2001 to Be "World Subjectrights Day"

http://wearcam.org/wsd.htm

Facial Recognition Vendor Test 2002

http://www.frvt.org/FRVT2002/default.htm

Facial Recognition Vendor Test 2000

http://www.dodcounterdrug.com/facialrecognition/DLs/FRVT_2000.pdf

http://www.dodcounterdrug.com/facialrecognition/FRVT2000/frvt2000.htm

Selected Facial Scan Projects

http://www.facial-scan.com/selected_facial_scan_projects1.htm

US government site for biometric technology (including face recognition)

http://www.biometrics.org/

Facing the Truth: A New Tool to Analyze Our Expressions

http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/may2001/faces/

the two dominant face recognition companies

http://www.visionics.com/faceit/

http://www.viisage.com/

The Many Faces of Viisage

http://www.notbored.org/viisage.html

other companies

http://www.visionspheretech.com/menu.htm

http://www.cognitec-ag.de/

http://www.c-vis.com/htdocs/english/facesnap/

http://www.neurodynamics.com/

http://www.imagistechnologies.com/

http://www.spiritcorp.com/face_rec.html

http://www.bioid.com/

http://www.keyware.com/

http://www.bionetrix.com/

Web pages about technical research projects on face recognition.

Face Recognition and Detection

http://home.t-online.de/home/Robert.Frischholz/face.htm

Fully Automatic Upper Facial Action Recognition

ftp://whitechapel.media.mit.edu/pub/tech-reports/TR-571.pdf

DoD Counterdrug Program Face Recognition Technology Program

http://www.dodcounterdrug.com/facialrecognition/Feret/feret.htm

http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/humanid/feret/feret_master.html

Handheld Face Identification Technology in a Pervasive Computing Environment

http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cbcl/publications/ps/pervasive-2002.pdf

Wearable Face Recognition and Detection

http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/ccg/projects/face/

Identification of Faces From Video

http://staff.psy.gla.ac.uk/~mike/videoproj.html

Evaluation of Face Recognition Algorithms

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/evalfacerec/

slides from an MIT course on human and artificial face recognition

http://web.mit.edu/9.670/www/

Gesture Recognition Home Page (related technology)

http://www.cybernet.com/~ccohen/

Articles about face-recognition controversies in various places, roughly in reverse chronological order.

Borders stores

first Borders says it "suspended any plans to implement" face recognition ...

http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO63359,00.html

... then it denies that it ever had any such intention

http://www.politechbot.com/p-02447.html

Borders is planning to use face recognition to identify shop-lifters

http://www.sundayherald.com/18007/



casinos

OPP uses secret cameras in casinos

("police are secretly scanning the faces of customers at all Ontario casinos")

http://www.efc.ca/pages/media/2001/2001-01-16-a-torontostar.html



Boston

Airport Anti-Terror Systems Flub Tests

http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&expire;=&urlID;=7387802&fb;=Y&partnerID;=1664

Face Recognition Fails in Boston Airport

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/26298.html

Logan Will Test Face-Data Security

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/298/metro/Logan_will_test_face_data_security+.shtml



Virginia Beach, Virginia

Virginia Beach Installs Face-Recognition Cameras

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19946-2002Jul3.html



Oakland, California

Oakland Airport: "Smile for the Camera"

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001/10/18/airport-camera.htm



Huntington Beach, California

Imagis and ORION Chosen to Install Biometrics by Huntington Beach Police

http://cipherwar.com/news/01/imagis_big_brother.htm



Providence, Rhode Island

Airport Chief Reconsiders Face Recognition Technology for Green

http://www.projo.com/cgi-bin/story.pl/news/06877271.htm



Australia

SmartGate: A Face Recognition Trial at Sydney Airport

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/SmartGate.html

Passengers Secretly Filmed in Anti-Terror Trial

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/04/1041566268528.html



Colorado

Colorado Governor Doesn't Want Face Recognition Technology Abused

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/den/entertainment/stories/technology-87985620010719-070716.html

Colorado Won't Use Facial Recognition Technology on Licenses

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/den/entertainment/stories/technology-86955020010712-110740.html



Minnesota

Security Face-Scanning Coming to Airport?

http://www.channel4000.com/msp/news/stories/news-131098520020319-070306.html



New York

Cameras to Seek Faces of Terror In Visitors to the Statue of Liberty

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/nyregion/25CAME.html



Missouri

Nuke Reactor: Show Me Your Face

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,54423,00.html



Super Bowl

Face Scans Match Few Suspects

http://www.sptimes.com/News/021601/TampaBay/Face_scans_match_few_.shtml

ACLU Protests High-Tech Super Bowl Surveillance

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-02-super-bowl-surveillance.htm

Super Bowl Surveillance: Facing Up to Biometrics

http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP209/IP209.pdf

Feds Use Biometrics Against Super Bowl Fans

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/16561.html

Cameras Scanned Fans for Criminals

http://www.sptimes.com/News/013101/TampaBay/Cameras_scanned_fans_.shtml



Jacksonville, Florida

Police Snooper Camera Fight Still Alive

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/083101/met_7161286.html



Tampa, Florida

Tampa Police Eliminate Facial-Recognition System

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/0820camera.html

Face Recognition Technology a Proven Farce

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/23559.html

Facial Frisking in Tampa

http://www.privacyfoundation.org/commentary/tipsheet.asp?id=46&action;=0

"Big Brother" Cameras on Watch for Criminals

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-08-02-big-brother-cameras.htm

"They made me feel like a criminal"

http://www.sptimes.com/News/080801/TampaBay/_They_made_me_feel_li.shtml

Civil Rights or Just Sour Grapes?

http://www.sptimes.com/News/080301/TampaBay/Civil_rights_or_just_.shtml

Click. BEEP! Face Captured

http://www.sptimes.com/News/071901/Floridian/Click_BEEP_Face_captu.shtml

Tampa Gets Ready For Its Closeup

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,167846,00.html

Masked Protesters Fight Face Scans

http://www.sptimes.com/News/071501/TampaBay/Masked_protesters_fig.shtml

Tampa Puts Face-Recognition System on Public Street

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-07-13-tampa-surveillance.htm

Tampa Scans the Faces in Its Crowds for Criminals

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/04/technology/04VIDE.html

public radio report about the controversy

http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/20010702.atc.14.rmm

Ybor Police Cameras Go Spy-Tech

http://www.sptimes.com/News/063001/TampaBay/Ybor_police_cameras_g.shtml



Palm Beach, Florida

Palm Beach Airport Won't Use Face-Scan Technology

http://www.local6.com/orlpn/news/stories/news-148124920020526-160533.html

Face Recognition Kit Fails in Florida Airport

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/25444.html



Britain

Think Tank Urges Face-Scanning of the Masses

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/20966.html

face recognition technology in the UK

http://www.urban75.com/Action/cctv.html

http://www.sourceuk.net/articles/a00624.html



Iceland

Iceland Places Trust in Face-Scanning

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1780000/1780150.stm

Iceland's Keflavik Airport Upgrades CCTV System with Visionics' FaceIt

http://ir.shareholder.com/vsnx/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=45325