Terrorism Prevention and Border Protection – New Face Recognition Tech

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A new airport security platform was announced by the face recognition provider FaceFirst. Using unique feature recognition capabilities, the new Guardian platform identifies visitors in areas with high foot traffic and supplements the identification process for border control agents.

Humans can typically recall just a few hundred faces on demand, resulting in slow customs processes, and rendering terror watch lists issued by federal and local authorities of little practical use. In comparison, Guardian compares millions of images per second, helping to identify travelers in checkpoints against a vast image database. According to the company’s announcement on prweb.com, the airport security platform may also help authorities monitor the status of arriving visitors or departing passengers.

FaceFirst proactively detects threats at airports, railways and other public transportation centers. The company entered the transportation security sector at Panama’s Tocumen International Airport. Panama Security Minister quickly declared the program a success, citing an average of 30 people per day detected with a police background or wanted by INTERPOL. The program was subsequently expanded, making it the world’s largest biometric surveillance program worldwide.

Guardian identifies visitors using cameras mounted at long distances, instantly alerting airport security by email and text message as needed with critical information.

Since their inaugural airport deployment, the company has expanded to military bases in the U.S. and the Middle East, Fortune 500 retail locations, American law enforcement agencies and other sectors. The new platform offers significantly improved processing speed, and intelligent feature recognition from its predecessor. The product’s security features have also been enhanced.

The company has also further automated the typically arduous task of searching through traditional surveillance video footage, making it easy to search for facial matches by image or keyword, effortlessly uncovering dates, times and locations of prior visits.

“Guardian is a huge leap forward in our ability to proactively safeguard borders and deter terrorism,” said FaceFirst CEO Peter Trepp. “The people tasked with homeland security worldwide have an incredibly difficult challenge. FaceFirst gives them the actionable intelligence they need to quickly confirm identity, expedite border crossings and prevent crime.”

“FaceFirst is private by design,” said Trepp. “We’ve gone to extreme lengths to ensure that biometric data is secure from both virtual and physical attacks, and the FaceFirst system is designed to prevent utilizing the platform for any type of profiling by race, age, gender or national origin.”