BARCELONA—I used my face to open doors for me.
On Monday I walked into a conference center and stood in front of a fist-sized, head-high camera instead of showing a badge with my photo on it. Seconds later, the screen said, “PLEASE ENTER.”
No one scanned the digital pass on my phone to get me admitted to this year’s MWC, the annual tech show formerly known as Mobile World Congress. The facial recognition software did all the work.
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Your face may already be a ticket to a venue in your area. Delta Air Lines Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc. and JetBlue Airways Corp. have installed ticketless boarding systems with facial recognition at several airports. This season, all Mets fans can take advantage of face-recognition express lanes previously reserved for season ticket holders. Scary? Cool? Based on my recent exposure to technology, it’s both.
As facial recognition access points appear in more public places like airports and concert halls, you might be wondering how you should feel about it.
Companies implementing facial recognition software tout speed, convenience, security, and contactless benefits for customers. Most also emphasize that it is only an option. Meanwhile, lawmakers in several US states are trying to tighten regulations around the use of this type of technology, citing privacy concerns and accusations of bias. Research has found that the technology is not as accurate for people of color and women in general.
At this year’s MWC trade show in Barcelona, attendees gained entry by standing in front of cameras equipped with facial recognition software. Angel Garcia/Bloomberg
At this year’s MWC trade show in Barcelona, attendees gained entry by standing in front of cameras equipped with facial recognition software. Maurizio Martorana FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALA At this year’s MWC trade show in Barcelona, attendees gained entry by standing in front of cameras equipped with facial recognition software. Angel Garcia/Bloomberg; Maurizio Martorana FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
While the answer depends on the individual, it helps if you know the company offering the service and the expected benefits: Do you want this company to store your biometric information? Do you get something useful in return? It also depends on where you are located, as local laws affect how facial recognition can be used and data collected.
Capture your facial print
Face ID works by creating a map of your face. The map contains your unique measurements – the distance between your forehead and your chin or between your eyes. These statistics are then converted into a code called a biometric token or faceprint.
This is how your iPhone’s Face ID identifies you, Google Photos can group photos of your children together, or Amazon.com Inc.’s Astro robot can distinguish family members from burglars. The tokens are not shared between different services – each uses its own unique, non-transferable token for you.
GSMA, the industry group that organizes MWC and represents mobile network operators worldwide, used a facial recognition service called Breez that was developed with ScanVis Ltd., a Hong Kong-based company. The service compares the faces of the participants with previously submitted photos of official IDs.
The Breez entry is optional, but I chose it for speed. Prior to the event, non-Breez attendees could wait several days for confirmation of their registration. Logging into the MWC app, which used my phone’s camera to match my face to the picture in my passport, took less than a minute.
During an interview with WSJ’s Joanna Stern at MWC Barcelona’s Journal House, Carme Artigas, Spain’s Secretary of State for Digitization and AI, shares her views on the responsible use of facial recognition technology in public. How safe is my data?
While the conference’s face scan trails certainly came in handy, every time I stared at the camera, I found myself wondering who was looking at me. Where does my picture go and what can I do with it?
A company storing your facial data could keep it and switch from venue admission to law enforcement, for example, or be acquired by a company with a completely different purpose than what you agreed to. This type of abuse is largely hypothetical. You can’t always track where your face lands, however: One company was selling facial recognition technology based on billions of images scraped from Facebook, LinkedIn and other sources.
Some air travelers can now board a flight simply by looking at a camera instead of presenting a passport.
Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Before agreeing to the use of biometrics, Josef Kittler, a professor of machine intelligence at the University of Surrey in the UK, recommends finding out three things: the purpose for collecting your data, what happens to your facial image when you no longer need the service, and how the data will be deleted.
Conference organizers said attendees’ biometric tokens are encrypted and stored in Europe, although the data can be accessed from Hong Kong. The event’s privacy policy states that the data will be “securely destroyed” within 28 days of the event, in accordance with European Union data protection laws. A spokesman for the GSMA told me that the data is expected to be deleted within three days of the event closing. ScanVis, the GSMA’s technical partner, did not respond to my request for comment.
Protection of your biometric data
While you almost always have the option to opt-out of facial recognition, ultimately there could be a cost, said Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Keep in mind that the toll booth lane is almost always much slower than the E-ZPass lanes.
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Another problem, she said, is that the US doesn’t have federal law governing opt-out and non-discrimination rights like the EU does. Not only are there laws in Europe, there are regulators that have the power to enforce them, said Dr. King. Currently, only a few states, including Illinois, Texas, and California, have biometric privacy rules.
In January, the New York Attorney General led an investigation into Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. after the New York City venue used facial recognition to prevent attorneys from companies suing the company from attending concerts or sporting events. In late February, two court rulings extended the scope of an Illinois law that regulates companies’ use of biometrics, which includes facial and retinal scans.
Face scanning will only catch on in our travel and entertainment, as well as in other areas like education, banking and law enforcement. We’ve only just begun to understand the pros and cons.
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