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Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

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Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#81

Post by toxik »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #72
Johnny555 wrote: post #9

The scan takes fractions of a second and has shown to be 99 percent accurate during testing Presumably it's 99% effective at matching random faces to the photos -- if a terrorist group has a pool of 1000 stolen passports, with a system that's only 99% effective at maching a random photo, I think they could do much better at finding a person (perhaps with some surgical alterations) that fits in that 1%. The process el…

Self-scanning in supermarkets was supposedly all about speeding checkout as a benefit to the consumer. This is about speeding boarding - that's the marketing friendly benefit to be shouted about. In actuality supermarket self-scanning is often slower than a traditional checkout queue. Particularly when items require staff authorisation. I expect this to be no better than traditional boarding in most cases. The real b…

I think it’s much more convenient with self-checkout, because I’m not holding up the line. I can take my sweet time and pack my bags as I go. It’s really a lot of trust being placed with the customer, it’d be very easy to shoplift.

Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#82

Post by tomcooks »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #64
Johnny555 wrote: post #9

The scan takes fractions of a second and has shown to be 99 percent accurate during testing Presumably it's 99% effective at matching random faces to the photos -- if a terrorist group has a pool of 1000 stolen passports, with a system that's only 99% effective at maching a random photo, I think they could do much better at finding a person (perhaps with some surgical alterations) that fits in that 1%. The process el…

On most flights within the Schengen area your boarding pass is no more manually checked. That's unless you fly business or are a high value status customer. Instead you just scan your boarding pass / smart phone yourself. I can't imagine that this is in any way slower than a face scan.

Also a QR code would be a lot more precise IMO

Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#83

Post by r_c_a_d »

makecheck wrote: post #69

This is sort of “hurry up and wait”; every time I feel like I got through the gate quickly, I just end up in line on the jet bridge or waiting 2 minutes for someone to fish every variety of item out of their overhead bin while the whole plane waits for them. The cause of slower boarding is BAGGAGE FEES. Airlines are penny-pinching, people bring everything on board to compensate, and struggling with luggage is slow as…

People take bags onboard to avoid fees, yes, but mostly because airlines lose hold luggage (or send it to the wrong place) and even if they don't you have to go and wait for it at the carousel.

The last flight I took, there were too many people taking onbord luggage and mine got taken off me and put in the hold :(

Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#84

Post by cm2187 »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #64
Johnny555 wrote: post #9

The scan takes fractions of a second and has shown to be 99 percent accurate during testing Presumably it's 99% effective at matching random faces to the photos -- if a terrorist group has a pool of 1000 stolen passports, with a system that's only 99% effective at maching a random photo, I think they could do much better at finding a person (perhaps with some surgical alterations) that fits in that 1%. The process el…

On most flights within the Schengen area your boarding pass is no more manually checked. That's unless you fly business or are a high value status customer. Instead you just scan your boarding pass / smart phone yourself. I can't imagine that this is in any way slower than a face scan.

I thought airlines or airports were required to check your identity to endure that the checked in luggages fly along the passenger who checked them in, in case there is a bomb or something. Granted this rule is a bit absurd in a world where most terrorist attacks are suicide attacks.

Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#85

Post by cm2187 »

ams6110 wrote: post #29
paxy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identity checks are handled by TSA, not airline employees, so this scan has nothing to do with security. They check your boarding pass to make sure you have paid for the flight you are getting on. Also "99% accuracy" can mean it has a 1% false-negative rate rather than false-positive, in which case they will just defer to scanning the boarding pass like normal.

They also scan boarding passes at the gate to verify that all checked bags have a corresponding passenger on the aircraft.

Plus they are required to know how many souls they have on board and who.

Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#86

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

>> “It doesn’t matter,” Maryland resident Kim Meekins said of not being informed ahead of time. “You go to different airports and they do different things depending on their technology. If it’s another safety measure to make sure everyone has a safe flight, I’m all for whatever. I didn’t need to be notified ahead of time.”

"I'm all for whatever"! The hell does one engage rationally with that?

Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#87

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

toxik wrote: post #81
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-scanning in supermarkets was supposedly all about speeding checkout as a benefit to the consumer. This is about speeding boarding - that's the marketing friendly benefit to be shouted about. In actuality supermarket self-scanning is often slower than a traditional checkout queue. Particularly when items require staff authorisation. I expect this to be no better than traditional boarding in most cases. The real b…

I think it’s much more convenient with self-checkout, because I’m not holding up the line. I can take my sweet time and pack my bags as I go. It’s really a lot of trust being placed with the customer, it’d be very easy to shoplift.

It's not easy (not any easier) to shoplift because there are random checks. People are much less inclined to put something extra in the bag if they know they can be checked. The ones that do shoplift are not using the bags with a lot of other groceries to do it, they likely hide items in their clothing. In such a mode, it doesn't make any difference how and whether they check out any actual paid items.

Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#88

Post by cm2187 »

Johnny555 wrote: post #18
peteretep wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a terrorist group has a pool of 1000 stolen passports, with a system that's only 99% effective at maching a random photo, I think they could do much better at finding a person (perhaps with some surgical alterations) that fits in that 1% Is this worse than the current security measures in place while boarding?

Probably not since agents don't check ID at all, but if I'm going to give up my privacy by having my passport photo shared with airports without my knowledge or consent, I'd like to think that I'm getting something out of the deal.

It’s not like there aren’t CCTVs in airports. They have your face on many records that they keep much longer.

Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#89

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Johnny555 wrote: post #9

The scan takes fractions of a second and has shown to be 99 percent accurate during testing Presumably it's 99% effective at matching random faces to the photos -- if a terrorist group has a pool of 1000 stolen passports, with a system that's only 99% effective at maching a random photo, I think they could do much better at finding a person (perhaps with some surgical alterations) that fits in that 1%. The process el…

>> The scan takes fractions of a second and has shown to be 99 percent accurate during testing

>> Presumably it's 99% effective at matching random faces to the photos

I think what they mean is that they carried out laboratory tests where a test subject stood facing the system's camera and the system tried to match their face to a database of pictures of peoples' faces, then decided whether the subject's face matched one in its database.

There is a lot that one can do to make this kind of testing give much better results than it should (e.g. use a small database, rather than the entire US passport photo database plus photos of visiting foreigners). This does not presuppose malice- a bit of sloppiness or choices dictated by budget restriction are plenty enough to "spike" the results.

On the other hand, even assuming 100% accurate evaluation one can expect a machine vision system's accuracy to fall way down when it's deployed in the real world, where conditions can no longer be as strictly controlled as in the lab.

So as a rule of thumb, we can probably assume that a 99% accuracy in the lab translates to ~75% accuracy in the wild.

Re: Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

#90

Post by CaptainZapp »

cm2187 wrote: post #84
CaptainZapp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On most flights within the Schengen area your boarding pass is no more manually checked. That's unless you fly business or are a high value status customer. Instead you just scan your boarding pass / smart phone yourself. I can't imagine that this is in any way slower than a face scan.

I thought airlines or airports were required to check your identity to endure that the checked in luggages fly along the passenger who checked them in, in case there is a bomb or something. Granted this rule is a bit absurd in a world where most terrorist attacks are suicide attacks.

It depends on the airport.

Certainly when a borading pass, matched to a passenger who checked in luggage, is not used for boarding the luggage will be unloaded.

Identity check really depends on the airport and airline. Sometimes your identity is checked when you enter the secure area, sometimes at the gate and sometimes not all.

Even at airports that don't check identities airlines - notably budget airlines - may check id at the gate.

It may also happen that id is (spot) checked upon exiting the plane, but this is very rare.

That's only applicable for flights within the Schengen area. Passport checks upon leaving or entering the Schengen area are pretty strict. Essentially every piece of id is checked towards the SIS[1]. But within Schengen and depending on the airport there may be no checks at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Information_System

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