Passport officers' errors in face matching.
Photo-ID is widely used in security settings, despite research showing that viewers find it very difficult to match unfamiliar faces. Here we test participants with specialist experience and training in the task: passport-issuing officers. First, we ask officers to compare photos to live ID-card bea...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2014-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4136722?pdf=render |
| _version_ | 1811289330006622208 |
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| author | David White Richard I Kemp Rob Jenkins Michael Matheson A Mike Burton |
| author_facet | David White Richard I Kemp Rob Jenkins Michael Matheson A Mike Burton |
| author_sort | David White |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Photo-ID is widely used in security settings, despite research showing that viewers find it very difficult to match unfamiliar faces. Here we test participants with specialist experience and training in the task: passport-issuing officers. First, we ask officers to compare photos to live ID-card bearers, and observe high error rates, including 14% false acceptance of 'fraudulent' photos. Second, we compare passport officers with a set of student participants, and find equally poor levels of accuracy in both groups. Finally, we observe that passport officers show no performance advantage over the general population on a standardised face-matching task. Across all tasks, we observe very large individual differences: while average performance of passport staff was poor, some officers performed very accurately--though this was not related to length of experience or training. We propose that improvements in security could be made by emphasising personnel selection. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-13T03:53:08Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-3a860cc0804e4aca97a56849b2d76450 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-13T03:53:08Z |
| publishDate | 2014-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj.art-3a860cc0804e4aca97a56849b2d764502022-12-22T03:03:44ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032014-01-0198e10351010.1371/journal.pone.0103510Passport officers' errors in face matching.David WhiteRichard I KempRob JenkinsMichael MathesonA Mike BurtonPhoto-ID is widely used in security settings, despite research showing that viewers find it very difficult to match unfamiliar faces. Here we test participants with specialist experience and training in the task: passport-issuing officers. First, we ask officers to compare photos to live ID-card bearers, and observe high error rates, including 14% false acceptance of 'fraudulent' photos. Second, we compare passport officers with a set of student participants, and find equally poor levels of accuracy in both groups. Finally, we observe that passport officers show no performance advantage over the general population on a standardised face-matching task. Across all tasks, we observe very large individual differences: while average performance of passport staff was poor, some officers performed very accurately--though this was not related to length of experience or training. We propose that improvements in security could be made by emphasising personnel selection.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4136722?pdf=render |
| spellingShingle | David White Richard I Kemp Rob Jenkins Michael Matheson A Mike Burton Passport officers' errors in face matching. PLoS ONE |
| title | Passport officers' errors in face matching. |
| title_full | Passport officers' errors in face matching. |
| title_fullStr | Passport officers' errors in face matching. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Passport officers' errors in face matching. |
| title_short | Passport officers' errors in face matching. |
| title_sort | passport officers errors in face matching |
| url | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4136722?pdf=render |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT davidwhite passportofficerserrorsinfacematching AT richardikemp passportofficerserrorsinfacematching AT robjenkins passportofficerserrorsinfacematching AT michaelmatheson passportofficerserrorsinfacematching AT amikeburton passportofficerserrorsinfacematching |