Heard a good one this morning about a failure of system design.

[stevebellovin@infosec.exchange]

Heard a good one this morning about a failure of system design. A flight from Newark Airport to London Heathrow was delayed by 45 minutes because they were using facial recognition for boarding, and it misidentified someone. This is apparently a difficult problem to fix, and the captain had to give passengers a physical description of the guy—a white male, it turns out—to try to figure out who it was.

[eliotlear@mastodon.social]

@SteveBellovin That misidentification can have dramatic effects. For one thing, if an individual is *not* indicated as "on board" and the plane takes off, the rest of that itinerary can be canceled, the person can be billed by the airline, and even blocked from booking further flights on that airline. Ask me how I know.

[adamshostack@infosec.exchange]

@SteveBellovin Cc e# @ehasbrouck

[ehasbrouck@urbanists.social]

@adamshostack @SteveBellovin @ehasbrouck@union.place - (1) Human gate agents are faster and more accurate at checking boarding passes against passports than is facial recognition; (2) it's surprisingly (or unsurprisingly?) common for people to get on the wrong plane, have 2 people issued boarding passes for the same seat, etc. Human gate agents and flight attendants can sort these things out, if robotic passenger processing doesn't get in the way.