Key to Our Security: 3-D Face Mapping for New National ID Cards

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>The future face of identity checking

>By Flora Stubbs, Evening Standard

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>This is how we could prove our identity in the future.

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>After signatures, fingerprints and iris recognition, 3-D face maps

>encoded onto ID cards and passports are unveiled today.

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>The ground-breaking system of recording biometric information could

>be the key to our security.

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>Its designers claim it could solve Home Secretary David Blunkett's

>problem of how to ensure that new national identity cards are forgery-

>proof.

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>Pilot ID card projects have used iris and fingerprint recognition

>systems, but both have suffered problems. Long eyelashes render iris

>recognition useless, while builders' fingerprints are often too worn

>down to be identified.

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>The new facial mapping system is virtually fool-proof, claims A4

>Vision, the company that developed it. It works by projecting a

>microscopic grid pattern over the face. A camera then records the way

>the grid has been disturbed by the subject's facial bone structure.

>As many as 50,000 points are recorded.

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>Data from the computerised image is stored in a chip inside a card or

>passport. Cameras at security points then compare the data on the

>chip with the face of the card-holder.

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>Kelly Richdale of A4 Vision said: " Using 3-D imaging, we are able to

>record every single one of the measurements and dimensions of the

>face. " It is this, she says, that makes it so accurate - and unlike

>iris or fingerprint recognition, 3-D facial imaging is impossible to

>fake.

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>A system that maps the face using 14 points is able to identify one

>person out of a possible 40 million.

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>Legislation on compulsory ID cards has not yet been passed but by

>October-next year all new " e-passports " will have to carry facial

>biometric information.

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>The technology is already used by banks, airports and government

>institutions in France, the US and by some UK companies.

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>The facial mapping system is on display at the Biometrics 2004

>conference at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster

>today.

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>http://www.thisislondon.com/til/jsp/modules/Article/print.jsp?itemId=14069002

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