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Starting in August, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the United States will begin testing a new system for scanning drivers’ faces as they enter and exit the country.
The pilot, called the Vehicle Face System (VFS), is planned for the Anzalduas Port of Entry in Texas and will operate for one year.
VFS aims to capture a facial recognition-ready image for every passenger in every car going through the American border, which will then be matched against visa and passport photos on file with CBP.
The project initially came about in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) in Tennessee.
ORNL gained approval to collect facial images of drivers to test the ability to capture a high-quality image from a moving vehicle in an outdoor environment.
Based on these test results, CBP will deploy its facial recognition camera system pilot to evaluate capturing facial biometrics of travellers and comparing them to photos in government files.
In 2004, US Congress required the Department of Homeland Security to develop a biometric entry and exit system.
As part of this Biometric Exit Programme, CBP is deploying new technology to verify travellers’ identities, both when they arrive and when they leave the United States, by matching a traveller to the document they are presenting.
A Customs spokesman said: “VFS will be implemented… to measure and evaluate the following: camera solution’s ability to capture a quality facial image for each occupant position in the vehicle; and biometric matching accuracy of images captured.
“CBP is able to biometrically confirm the identity of travellers departing from the United States.”
CBP is currently moving through the necessary privacy requirements, and the project is set to be officially announced and submitted to the Federal Register in the coming months.
