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CNN Sunday Morning
Face Recognition Technology May Improve Airport Safety
Aired September 30, 2001 - 08:40 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: The government and the airline industry are looking for ways to improve security in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Screening passengers with what's called face recognition technology is getting a lot of attention.
Dr. Joseph Attick is the co-founder of Visionics Corporation. Dr. Attick is in our New York bureau this morning. Describe this technology for us and how it works.
JOSEPH ATTICK, VISIONICS CORPORATION: "Face It" is software that uses standard security cameras to spot faces in a crowd and match them against, say, a watch-list, say, of terrorists or known criminals.
It's just standard cameras connected to a bank of computers that are able to match faces and send the alarm to the airport.
As you can see...
MESERVE: Go right ahead, I'm sorry.
ATTICK: As you can see, the standard camera finds the faces, locates the landmarks on the face, and builds a triangulation of the face, which converts that face into a mathematical code called the face print, which contains your identity.
The face prints are the ones that get matched against those stored in the watch-list. If a match happens, then you've got your target. You've got your terrorist match, and security will be alerted.
MESERVE: Can you fool it? What's -- let's say, for instance, you had plastic surgery done?
ATTICK: Well, I mean, short of putting a bag on your head, the system is going to be looking for visible landmark on your face, and triangulating and extrapolating. So, it's not going to be looking at areas where you've done some changes or coverage, like a beard or a mustache or even changes in the nose area.
You have to do something really dramatic before you can alter the skeletal structure of your face. This is not based on the superficial looks of your face, it's based on measuring skeletal relationship as are seen through your skin.
MESERVE: Is this in use now?
ATTICK: There are many places where it is in use, yes. In East London, it's used with 300 cameras looking at the crowds and matching against criminals. Birmingham, the same way, and also recently in Tampa.
It was also used in the Mexican elections to make sure that people are not voting more than once. So, there are wide range of applications where it is already in use.
MESERVE: How expensive is it?
ATTICK: Since the technology is mainly software technology, using standard camera hardware, the effective cost of this is going to be on the order of $700,000 to equip a standard airport with this type of shield of this capacity.
MESERVE: And so, if one were to equip every airport in the nation with this technology, any idea what the price tag would be?
ATTICK: It is hard to estimate the price tag, because the applicability of this technology can be done in many layers. So, you can start with the security gates, where the metal detectors are. You can also add the arrivals lounge, when people are coming from the outside. You can add the boarding gate. So, it depends where you want to do this and how many places you would like to implement it.
And obviously, one could start with what I call the category X airports, the 20 airports in this country that are the heaviest traveled airports, the most critical ones, and go down the list. So, we don't have to make that investment all at once.
MESERVE: As you know, there are some people who say this just makes their skin crawl, that this is just a little bit too much like big brother. What do you have to say to them?
ATTICK: Well, we have to emphasize here that this is not a national ID system. It is not identifying you and me. It's not identifying anybody in the honest majority. It's simply spotting somebody on a watch-list and matching against the terrorist watch- list. This is, of course, part of technology, requiring responsible use.
That's why we've actually been calling for Congress to insure that these databases are well-controlled, these watch-lists are well- controlled, to insure that down the line there will be no misuse and there will be no additions to the database other than the criminals that we are looking for and other than the terrorists that pose a threat to public safety.
MESERVE: Can you tell me the status of any talks you may be having with federal officials about instituting this system in the nation's airports?
ATTICK: It's clearly something of interest to a variety of organizations that are concerned about public safety. Unfortunately, I cannot give you any update at this point in time.
MESERVE: OK. Dr. Joseph Attick of Visionics Corporation. Thanks so much for joining us from New York.
ATTICK: Thank you.
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