The quest to accurately identify a person as a means of either corroborating a person’s statement that they are who they say they are, or in determining who a person is exactly is an ancient endeavor. To be sure, over one thousand years ago, the Chinese used ink and thumbprints as a means of verifying the authorships of books (Rudman & Inman, 2002). As our understanding of identifying principles became more advanced, the benefits of their use in criminal justice such as to help identify who the victim was, or who was present at the scene of a crime. For over a hundred years, the primary means for the individualized identification of a person remained the fingerprint. Fingerprint were determined to be unique to each individual and general permanent from the time that they were formed to a person’s death and decomposition. However, over the last two decades, advances in science and technology, especially forensic science and information technology have produced advances that not only have upgraded fingerprint analysis but also added a number of alternative identifying technologies. Two such alternate technologies include facial recognition and iris scans
Facial recognition refers to the technological process that attempts to identify person based on a comparison of a digital image of a person captured from a prior photo, video or image source to a current video image of the same person. The technology works through “recognition algorithms” that measure different aspects of a person’s face ranging from the “shape of the eyes, nose and cheekbones” to “the thickness of lips and color of hair” (Majekodummi & Idachaba, 2011). Once those calculations are determined, they are used to search “for other images with matching calculations to produce likely matches (Majekodummi & Idachaba, 2011). The advantages of facial recognition are that it can be used with minimal invasiveness to scan large groups of people relatively accurately if perfect conditions exist. The disadvantage of facial recognition is that it tends to be inaccurate in less than perfect conditions such as low with low light or through glass. In addition, it can be fooled if target wears a hat, hood, glasses or if the image used to make the original algorithm was too old. On the other hand, Iris scans or iris recognition is the technological process of identifying a person by analyzing pattern in their iris. Like a fingerprint, a person’s iris form specific pattern that are unique and structurally distinct to each person. In addition, once formed iris patterns tend to be permanent and unchangeable (Dunker, 2003). The advantages of iris scanning are that; like a fingerprint they are highly accurate in identifying a person. In addition, iris scans are fairly quick to implement. The disadvantages of iris scans are the current lack of a sizeable database by which to compare irises and perhaps most importantly, iris evidence is not left at the scene of a crime (Majekodummi & Idachaba, 2011).
The fact that facial recognition and iris scans provide promising new means of identifying people is not the only effects that are produced for law enforcement officials. In addition, because the information that each provides can be digitized, they also offer criminal justice stakeholders easier means of communicating that information between themselves or with other relevant information consumer such as private security personnel. One important positive effects of this development is that it is much easier for law enforcement to keep in touch; through the near instantaneous transmission of information from a centralized database to a portable device in the hands of an officer in the field. A second advantage is that it allows law enforcement to broaden or diversify information. For instance, a police officer using iris scans at the border can tap into the FBI’s national iris database for more comprehensive analysis. Conversely, one negative impact of these new technologies for communications is that it can upset the privacy security balance. This is especially true of facial recognition. For example, an officer can scan of picture of his wife or girlfriend into a database then use that produced algorithm to scan crowds anywhere to see if she was present.
In comparing the two technologies, namely facial recognition and iris scans; facial recognition seems to be the most promising. First, as mentioned it allows surveillance with limited interference or disruption of the people under surveillance. Naturally, it should be limited to use in public areas were a person knowingly has a restricted expectation of privacy. Accordingly, and importantly as the technology for its gets better, it potentially can save law enforcement time, money and staff in the effort to identify criminals and criminal suspects.
While the effort to create an effective system of identifying people has been going on for thousands of years, recently advances in technology and communications brings us closer than ever before to establishing the perfect identification tool. Facial recognition and iris scans or just two of a number of technologies that have the potential to help law enforcement official to more broadly and accurately identify suspects at any given time or location.
References
Dunker, M. (2003). Don’t blink: Iris recognition for biometric identification. Retrieved from https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/authentication/dont-blink-iris-recognition-biometric-identification-1341
Rudin, N. & Inman, K. (2002). Forensic science timeline. Retrieved from http://plaza.ufl.edu/jhefner/forensic_Timeline.pdf
Majekodunmi, T.O. & Idachaba, F.E. (2011). A review of the fingerprint, speaker recognition, face recognition and iris recognition based biometric identification technologies. Retrieved from http://www.iaeng.org/publication/WCE2011/WCE2011_pp1681-1687.pdf
