Monday, August 27, 2007

Facial recognition system at Beach a failure

Virginia Beach spent $200,000 in 2002 to put together a facial recognition security system at the Oceanfront, but the system has essentially been scrapped, reports The Virginian-Pilot. It was designed to match facial images to a computer database, but it suffered from technical problems and has not been used in two years.

The Beach chief of police noted that the systems work very well in a closed environment such as a casino or an airport. But the facial-recognition technology just doesn’t cut it at an outdoor venue.

Virginia Beach was the second U.S. city to try the technology, following the lead of Tampa, Fla. But Tampa also encountered problems and abandoned its project in 2003.

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