Palm Beach Airport to use face recognition technology

Airline Industry Information, Jan 15, 2002

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2002 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Florida's Palm Beach International Airport is adopting face-recognition technology and is digitising background checks performed on employees in a bid to root out terrorism suspects.

The new system for digitising employee fingerprints is meant to provide clearance to workers who have unescorted access to secured airport areas. The fingerprinting system, which is already is in use at the airport, uses computerised files made from scanned fingerprint images which are forwarded over the Internet to the FBI. The agency compares those images against a database of known offenders' fingerprints. The results will then be placed on a secure web site, where airport officials can quickly access the information.

The digital face-recognition system will scan the faces of people present at the airport and rapidly compare their images against photos of suspected terrorists stored in an electronic database. If a match is made, an alert will be raised to authorities, reported Newsbytes.com.

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