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".

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".

English Defence – another success story for the UK Border Force

The leader of the English Defence League is a man called Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Or Tommy Robinson. Or Paul Harris.

Whatever his name is, he has just been sent down for ten months for trying to get into the US with a passport he borrowed from Andrew McMaster. He succeeded in leaving the UK on the McMaster passport. But they rumbled him at the US border.

The Press Association story about Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris's trip to New York is carried by just about every media outlet in the English-speaking world. See for example the Daily Mail's Leader of far-right English Defence League jailed for 10 months for using someone else's passport to get into the U.S. And just about everyone sees in it the story they want to see.

Fraser Nelson, the esteemed editor of the Spectator, sees it as evidence that flat print fingerprinting works – that's the technology used by the Americans to discover that it was questionable whether this traveller really was Andrew McMaster:

The head of the English Defence League has learnt the hard way that those fingerprint scanners at JFK actually work. gu.com/p/3cqgq/tw — Fraser Nelson (@frasernelson) January 7, 2013

There are good reasons to believe that Mr Nelson draws the wrong conclusion about biometrics.

There are other questions.

How did Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris manage to leave JFK and spend the night in New York? How did he subsequently manage to fly out of the US and back to the UK? He flew in as McMaster and out as Harris. There was no record of Harris having entered the US. How did the US authorities manage to let a man who had not come into the country leave it? I-94 exit controls are supposed to match entry controls ...

Let's leave all those complicated issues to resolve themselves as and when more detail is released. Let's look at something simple.

Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris managed to leave the UK on a false passport:

He used a self check-in kiosk to board the Virgin Atlantic flight at Heathrow, and was allowed through when the document was checked in the bag drop area.

Those "self check-in kiosks" or "eGates" or "smart gates" or whatever you want to call them have cost the British taxpayer a fortune. And they don't work. Will the UK Border Force please stop wasting our money on eGates? And will they please stop pretending that eGates provide any sort of border security?

English Defence – another success story for the UK Border Force

The leader of the English Defence League is a man called Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Or Tommy Robinson. Or Paul Harris.

Whatever his name is, he has just been sent down for ten months for trying to get into the US with a passport he borrowed from Andrew McMaster. He succeeded in leaving the UK on the McMaster passport. But they rumbled him at the US border.

The Press Association story about Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris's trip to New York is carried by just about every media outlet in the English-speaking world. See for example the Daily Mail's Leader of far-right English Defence League jailed for 10 months for using someone else's passport to get into the U.S. And just about everyone sees in it the story they want to see.

Fraser Nelson, the esteemed editor of the Spectator, sees it as evidence that flat print fingerprinting works – that's the technology used by the Americans to discover that it was questionable whether this traveller really was Andrew McMaster:

The head of the English Defence League has learnt the hard way that those fingerprint scanners at JFK actually work. gu.com/p/3cqgq/tw — Fraser Nelson (@frasernelson) January 7, 2013

There are good reasons to believe that Mr Nelson draws the wrong conclusion about biometrics.

There are other questions.

How did Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris manage to leave JFK and spend the night in New York? How did he subsequently manage to fly out of the US and back to the UK? He flew in as McMaster and out as Harris. There was no record of Harris having entered the US. How did the US authorities manage to let a man who had not come into the country leave it? I-94 exit controls are supposed to match entry controls ...

Let's leave all those complicated issues to resolve themselves as and when more detail is released. Let's look at something simple.

Public service in the UK 2013-style – ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken

Under the guidance of ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, the Government Digital Service (GDS) have turned parts of Martha Lane Fox's digital-by-default revolutionary manifesto into reality. At least what passes for reality in the Cabinet Office.

Is her manifesto really revolutionary?

It certainly looks like it when she says:

Directgov [=GDS] should own the citizen experience of digital public services and be tasked with driving a 'service culture' across government which could, for example, challenge any policy and practice that undermines good service design ... It seems to me that the time is now to use the Internet to shift the lead in the design of services from the policy and legal teams to the end users ... Directgov SWAT teams ... should be given a remit to support and challenge departments and agencies ... We must give these SWAT teams the necessary support to challenge any policy and legal barriers which stop services being designed around user needs.

It looks as though the delivery tail should wag the policy dog. But has it worked out that way?

Yes.

In his review of his first 18 months in the job, the Executive Director of Digital says:

Looking at the highlights of what we have delivered, it is notable that delivery of services, whether they be information or transactional, has come before final strategy work is completed. Or put more simply, in an analogue world policy dictates to delivery, but in a digital world delivery informs policy. This is what agile means for Government and its services, and if delivered in this way, the ramifications are profound.

Public service in the UK 2013-style – ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken

Under the guidance of ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, the Government Digital Service (GDS) have turned parts of Martha Lane Fox's digital-by-default revolutionary manifesto into reality. At least what passes for reality in the Cabinet Office.

Is her manifesto really revolutionary?

Public service in the UK 2013-style – Tim O'Reilly

Under the guidance of ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, the Government Digital Service (GDS) have turned parts of Martha Lane Fox's digital-by-default revolutionary manifesto into reality. At least what passes for reality in the Cabinet Office.

Are they getting it right?

How would they know?

These questions have been exercising the ex-Guardian man and he has sought the blessing of the prophet Tim O'Reilly by way of an answer, or sign. Quite what O'Reilly knows about government or about the UK is not clear, nor is there any explanation how he got into the GDS building, but there is footage of him officiating at the Eucharist where GDS's faith in the web was renewed.

Are we right to use such religiose language?

Undoubtedly.

In his review of his first 18 months in the job, under a photograph of the prophet looking as though he may have eaten a bad locust while he was still in the desert, the Executive Director of Digital includes this:

Tim O’Reilly said of the Government Digital Strategy: “This is the new bible for anyone working in open government”

Public service in the UK 2013-style – Tim O'Reilly

Under the guidance of ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, the Government Digital Service (GDS) have turned parts of Martha Lane Fox's digital-by-default revolutionary manifesto into reality. At least what passes for reality in the Cabinet Office.

Are they getting it right?

How would they know?

Public service in the UK 2013-style – Martha Lane Fox

Under the guidance of ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, the Government Digital Service have turned parts of Martha Lane Fox's digital-by-default revolutionary manifesto into reality. At least what passes for reality in the Cabinet Office.

Why?

Why are they doing that?

In the old days, before we were born, yesterday, the answer would have hinged on Whitehall's public service ethos. Not any more.

The new answer is given on the ex-Guardian man's website by Martha Lane Fox herself:

It is a rare individual that can take a bunch of ideas and turn them into a reality in any environment but particularly in government. Mike is doing just that for me and it has been a privilege to watch.

Public service in the UK 2013-style – Martha Lane Fox

Under the guidance of ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, the Government Digital Service have turned parts of Martha Lane Fox's digital-by-default revolutionary manifesto into reality. At least what passes for reality in the Cabinet Office.

Why?

Why are they doing that?