Tuesday 8 January 2013

Facial recognition blarney

TheJournal.ie is an Irish news website that invites its users to shape the news agenda. Read, share and shape the day’s stories as they happen, from Ireland, the world and the web. On 29 December 2012 TheJournal.ie carried the following article:
Facial recognition on the way for social welfare claimants

The rollout of a new Public Services Card will mean new technology to ensure claimants are who they claim to be.

SOCIAL WELFARE CLAIMANTS will be faced – literally – with cameras to determine their identity when a new generation of identity cards is rolled out early next year.

The new Public Services Card, which has already being phased in and will be introduced nationwide in 2013 – will require welfare recipients to stand in front of a camera so that their facial image can be recorded and printed onto their new card.

Once the rollout has been completed, visitors to Social Welfare offices will have another picture taken and referenced against the original to vouch for their identity.

The moves are the Department of Social Protection’s latest attempts to clamp down on social welfare fraud.
Let's do a bit of sharing and shaping, as requested, with one of yesterday's stories from around the world – yet another revelation that facial recognition doesn't work, when it was reported that the leader of the English Defence League sailed through the Heathrow Airport security checks using another man's passport.

Good luck Ireland, but don't rely on Public Services Cards to "clamp down on social welfare fraud".

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