Customs and Border Protection Facial Recognition Program

 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) compare a traveler's face to the photo on their passport to authenticate their identity and associate the traveler with the information in the passport.  Historically, this comparison has been done by the CBP agent.  The traveler presented his passport to the agent who opened it to the traveler's photo and compared the traveler's face to the photo. This has been a time consuming, somewhat cumbersome, and error prone process.  

Now this process has been automated.  The traveler faces a digital camera and a computer compares the traveler's face to faces in its database, the database of photos that were submitted along with applications for passports (or visas).  If a match is found, the traveler has been identified.  This process is more complete, faster, more convenient, uniform, and less error prone than relying upon the capability or skill of a human agent.  

For travelers who have just been on a cruise, this identity check is all that is required.  Having been so identified the traveler can go straight to baggage claim. International air travelers may still be interviewed by an agent who will ask all the questions that agents have always asked, such as where the traveler has been, where they are going, and the purpose of their trip. The computer will show the agent all the information that is associated with the traveler in the database.  

Tests of this technology conducted over months suggest that the technology correctly identifies about 98% of travelers entering our shores.  Any exceptions are resolved by an agent using the same methods and procedures CBP has always used.  

While CBP has taken steps to incorporate some privacy principles into its program, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) has criticized its notices to travelers about the technology and particularly their failure to adequately notify travelers that they may opt out of the program and enter through the archaic procedures.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is "alarmed" about the program.  They fear that "DHS has already laid out - and begun implementing - a clear plan to expand face surveillance."  Of course, this program is not surveillance but merely automation of an established application.  The ACLU is concerned that facial recognition technology in general is "riddled with bias and inaccuracies," and "the program will likely result in harms ranging from missed flights to lengthy interrogations or worse."  Here the proof is in the pudding.  So far, travelers endorse the program for its speed and convenience. 

The ACLU also fears that facial recognition technology "threatens to supercharge DHS's abusive practices."  Certainly there have been abuses at the border.  I caution clients to be prepared for them.  However, most have been abuses of their authority by individuals.  While I have faulted DHS and CBP for their failure to caution against these abuses, I have found no evidence that they were the result of policy or programs.  In my sixty years in information technolgy, I can recall no useful technolgy that was not been abused or misused.  

As a security practitioner, I have preferred facial recognition, and speaker recognition, to such mechanisms as fingerprint (recently shown to be less reliable than we have believed for a century https://tinyurl.com/fingerprintreliability) or even the precision of DNA.  Facial and speech, are the only two "biometrics" that can be recognized by ordinary people, even infants, better than computers.  We are wired for it.  Indeed, it is only recently that computers have achieved parity with people in recognizing. All the other biometrics have relied upon experts to  interpret them for us.