The project's purpose is to determine if
facial-recognition software can be used to pick out known criminals from a crowd
moving through a train station.
Germany's Bundeskriminalamt
(BKA, or Federal Criminal Investigation Office) is using RFID
as part of a test of facial-recognition software. The trial began this month and
will last until January.
The country's Federal Ministry
of the Interior authorized the test in mid-February, which was held in the
main railway station in Mainz, a city not far from Frankfurt. The project gained
new relevance in August when police foiled a plot to blow up regional trains in
Germany. Video monitoring of passengers in train stations played a key role in
identifying the attempted terrorists.
The BKA says the purpose of the test is to find out if
biometric facial-recognition software can be used to pick out known criminals
from a crowd of moving people—without mistaking innocent citizens for the
guilty parties.
Working with three commercial technology vendors (which the BKA declined to
identify), the organization set up six cameras to monitor an escalator and part
of a stairway in the station. The system will save photos of passersby and 200
volunteers carrying RFID-enabled smart cards on their daily commutes. The system
interrogates the cards' embedded RFID tags each time participants pass through
the test zone. The BKA will not reveal any additional technical details about
the RFID system, such as whether tags are UHF or HF, passive or active. Anke
Schwalbach, a BKA spokeswoman, says releasing such information might harm the
project because it could help vandals interfere with it.
The facial-recognition system will try to identify the participants in the test
by measuring the jawbone and other facial features in images taken by the six
cameras, then comparing the results with those based on photos previously taken
of the volunteersand stored in a database. Facial-recognition software is still
considered unreliable, so the test is intended to determine the accuracy of the
software. Its ability to accurately identify volunteer participants passing
through the station will be compared with RFID data collected by the
interrogators reading the participants' RFID tags.A similar system, the
Tetragate, was recently created by American Barcode, enabling companies to
monitor and authenticate thousands of people as they enter secure buildings.
Joachim Koehler, department head of the NetMedia research division at the Fraunhofer-Institut
IAIS, says the accuracy of facial-recognition software declines as the
number of photographed people rises. If 50 photos in a database are matched, for
example, the accuracy rate is usually about 90 percent. However, when this
number increases to 500, the success rate declines to 50 percent, according to
an article published in the German daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
RFID accuracy rates, on the other hand, can be higher than 99 percent.
Data privacy and personal privacy are highly prized in Germany. Therefore, the
BKA has designed the test so those who do not wish to be photographed can
circumvent the test zone. Citizens can view the test zone in a photo on the
BKA's Web site.
"The only data saved on the RFID tag is the ID number of the
participant," says Schwalbach. Furthermore, photos of passersby not
participating in the test will be deleted after 48 hours, and data collected
will be seen only by BKA employees working on the test. Test participants will
receive a small gift upon completion of the trial.
