Border security to start testing facial recognition

Federal privacy commissioner urges caution as technology could lead to mistakes

OTTAWA— To keep alleged terrorists and other criminals out of Canada, the country’s border agency plans to compare images of people arriving here with photos of suspects on watchlists.

The federal privacy watchdog has cautioned the agency that the scheme could ensnare the wrong travellers, resulting in unwarranted scrutiny for some people at the border.

The Canada Border Services Agency wants to see how well the facialrecognition technology works at various locations and under different conditions of lighting and moving crowds.

The border agency’s science and engineering directorate has quietly been working with the University of Quebec and other partners to gauge the ability of computer devices to extract information from video footage.

The initiative is among the latest federal efforts to use biometric tools that focus on personal characteristics, such as fingerprints, an iris or the contours of a face, to identify people in the name of security.

In his recently released annual report, privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien says his office provided advice on the potential pitfalls, including the possibility the system will generate “false positives” that could result in unnecessary secondary screening for travellers.

The privacy commissioner urged the border agency to assess the risks of using the technology, including issues that might arise during its testing.

The border agency declined to make anyone available to discuss the project.

In written answers, a spokesperson said the agency continues to work with the commissioner to “ensure that privacy implications are appropriately addressed.”

The agency noted that, while it plans to test the technology in an “operational context,” no trials involving travellers have taken place.

The surveillance tool could eventually be installed at border points and international airports across Canada.

For facial recognition to be successful, a system using it needs a quality digital image of a person’s face, a database of images of suspects and criminals and software that will find a match between the two, the privacy commissioner’s office noted.

Technical findings published by the federal border agency indicate researchers have assessed the technique’s use in settings such as an interview counter, hallway, turnstile and waiting and baggage-claim areas.

One thread of the research looked at a system’s ability to match images of people in a video stream with photos of “persons of interest.”

The Calgary police service is said to be the first force in Canada to use the technology for solving crimes.

Passport Canada has been using facial recognition for years to scrutinize photos and prevent the same person from holding many passports under different names.

The privacy commissioner has made several recommendations about the initiative, saying all of the data in the system should be protected through encryption.

“We are not yet at the point where we can take pictures of people on the street with our smartphones, identify them and gain access to information about them,” said a March 2013 report published by the commissioner’s office.

“However, this reality may not be too far off and we can only imagine what that will do to our interactions, relationships and how we conduct our lives.”