Face Scanning In US Airports Is Rife With Technical Problems (engadget.com) 62
Homeland Security's Inspector General has issued a report warning that its airport face scanning system is struggling with "technical and operational challenges." The report says that Customs and Border Protection "could only use the technology with 85 percent of passengers due to staff shortages, network problems and hastened boarding times during flight delays," reports Engadget. "The system did catch 1,300 people overstaying their allowed time in the U.S., but it might have caught more -- and there were problems 'consistently' matching people from specific age groups and countries." From the report: The watchdog also pointed out uncertainty about help from airlines, such as requiring them buy the cameras needed for taking passengers' photos. That represents a "significant point failure" for the face scanning system, the Inspector General said. As a result, the oversight body warned that Homeland Security might not make its target of having the face scanning system completely ready for use in the top 20 US airports by 2021.
Is this really an unexpected outcome...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, the US government is well known to blow a ton of cash on flawed technology implementations, even if the specific tech itself is otherwise well established and durable. They bought a recognition technology that doesn't work because #reason -- chalk it up to more wasted spending. The company engaged likely has some political or nepotist tie somewhere. /shrug
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So sure, you can blame the govt, but the private sector, who has no skin in the game and has a huge straw sucking all the taxpayer money away to line the pockets of their greedy boardmembers and shareholders are just as much to blame.
They don't call it pork for nothing.
Overstaying their time? In an airport? (Score:1)
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How did you "overstayed at the airport" from "...overstaying their allowed time in the U.S...,."??? In a rush to post a comment and never bothered reading the rest of the sentence?
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Using face scanning the USA can finally count every face that entered the USA legally and when they returned back to their own nations.
The time and date is very easy to understand and is set. Most other advanced nations have the same methods to then find and remove all people who overstay.
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Come on, you overstayed and you are at the international airport about to board a plane to leave the country and you arrest them, why, just fucking why?!?
My concern especially with junk yard dog US law enforcers, is how secure are they, how hackable are they, did they even bother to secure them. One hack and that family boarding a flight are not terrorist and in the US that is extremely serious and dangerous, they are very likely to get shot, regardless of age or gender, just trigger happy fuckwits emptyin
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I think everybody is asking how useful it is to detect people overstaying *when they are leaving*!!!
You seem rather butt hurt that somebody might question this. It has nothing to do with whether enforcement of immigration is a good or bad idea.
A better explanation without your misconception of what is being asked: 1. it is useful for getting a count of how much overstaying is happening (huge amounts btw, many times the number of people sneaking across the border). 2. It could stop somebody who previously ov
Why is this a headline? (Score:2)
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But doing so you don't have to pass a border patrol checkpoint where they scan your passport and face.
Talking points (Score:3)
Now that the hardware is in, you define "points of failure." The industry isn't 100% behind you. The people don't want to have their pictures taken. Change the conversation from "do you want this hardware," to "do you want it to work correctly or just sit and waste money?"
Just another step in a fairly quick shift to lives monitored by systems and reported on by algorithms.
--
Who controls the past controls the future - George Orwell
How much per person? (Score:4, Interesting)
So 1300 people overstaying their visa (leaving the US at that point, as well - unless we want to put them in jail?). And almost 200 million spent on that program in 2017 alone (with 1 billion planned by 2025) What's the cost per visa overstayer? And what is the benefit to us, as a nation (other than another pork barrel for the DHS and their contractors)
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No more staying days or longer in the USA without a legal reason.
The benefit to the USA is a return to the rule of law.
People on holiday know they have to return to their own nations within a time they understood before entering the USA.
In the US for an education? Don't overstay and don
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The USA gets to join other advanced nations with a normal legal system to ensure it can count every person legally allowed to work and stay in the USA. As they enter the USA and when they return to their own nations.
No more staying days or longer in the USA without a legal reason.
Who gives a shit? Seriously, make a case for me to care about this, because I'm not seeing what the big deal is and not many people do, which is why you have so much resistance to "fixing" it.
It's up there with auto ticketing people for speeding a mile over the limit, or for walking past a don't walk on grass sign, or stopping in a no standing area, rolling right turn on red, or any other infraction that people generally get away with every day that don't amount to a hill of beans. It just seems petty, an
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People on holiday know they have to return to their own nations within a time they understood before entering the USA.
A few times it wasn't that easy to explain the CBP office that concept..... like that you might want to return back home after a holiday...
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So 1300 people overstaying their visa (leaving the US at that point, as well - unless we want to put them in jail?). And almost 200 million spent on that program in 2017 alone (with 1 billion planned by 2025) What's the cost per visa overstayer? And what is the benefit to us, as a nation (other than another pork barrel for the DHS and their contractors)
Hi there, I'm Troy Mclure, you may remember me from such propaganda films such as, "Brown, the colour out to get you" and "Justifiable Homicide III: My Lai"
Well first of all, we don't call them "visa overstayers", that term is too PC and not alarmist enough. It gives people the impression that it's just someone who's stayed on holiday a few days past when they're meant to. We are supposed to call them "illegal economic immigrants". The economic part doesn't mean anything, it just scares people and that i
Becaus3 (Score:2)
"Because terrorism!"
Almost 20 years later, a panopticon severed from it.
my experience (Score:2)
I used the kiosk face scanner one time. The problem was that the camera was positioned at the top of the kiosk so you had to look up, but the button to take the picture was at the bottom. It was almost impossible to take a good picture that way.
Typical of Trumps America (Score:1)
and there were problems 'consistently' matching people from specific age groups and countries."
So basically the system is ageist and racist
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That's why I connect in Guatemala (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That's why I connect in Guatemala (Score:4, Informative)
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I think that a higher base-education level, especially a bunch of Msc's or better*, would be able to put their heads together and come up with something better than the dog-and-pony show that we have now. They might come up with less intrusive methods that don't violate civil liberties and yet actually work.
With better methods in place, the people employed by the TSA would generally have more interest in their jobs and better motivation to do them well, and have better attitudes as a result. Feeling like