USA Makes Strange Decisions? Check This Out.

[Cort Haus]

We've had to use serious faces on passports in the UK from as long as I've ever had one, which long predates facial-recogition software.

The reason always given was "it's a serious document, not a laughing matter". Everyone, AFAIK, has always accepted it and not complained. I've never ever heard anyone complain about it and I'm amazed to see how amazed you guys are to discover this.

[Spiffor]

Maybe that's because most people smile on their IDs over here (France)

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
We've had to use serious faces on passports in the UK from as long as I've ever had one, which long predates facial-recogition software.

The reason always given was "it's a serious document, not a laughing matter". Everyone, AFAIK, has always accepted it and not complained. I've never ever heard anyone complain about it and I'm amazed to see how amazed you guys are to discover this.

The theory, I think, is that smiling distorts the face in a way that makes it harder to recognize; comparing a blank expression on a person to the blank experssion on his photo ID is easier than comparing a smiling person's face to a picture of him smiling.

The easiest way to compare faces manually for ID recognition, though, is to look at them upside-down. Great technique for looking exclusively at documents; unfortunately, somewhat less practical in an airport customs line.

[Urban Ranger]

Computers are very bad at doing what we humans do well. We are very bad at what they do well. Computers and humans are pretty much complementary.

Why bother spending zillions of $ in trying to make computers to recognise faces, while you can simply put a person there and do the job 100x better?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Computers are very bad at doing what we humans do well. We are very bad at what they do well. Computers and humans are pretty much complementary.

Why bother spending zillions of $ in trying to make computers to recognise faces, while you can simply put a person there and do the job 100x better?

Please think before posting.

The idea is to match the faces against a database of many thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of faces.

What kind of person can do that.

[TheStinger]

I heard smilling to a US immigration official can get you barred so I don't htink its a problem

[DaShi]

That's only if you wink and grab your crotch while smiling.