COPS SCAN PEARSON TRAVELLERS

The RCMP is using face recognition at Canada's largest airport to
identify drug dealers and other criminals. The system, similar to one
at Ontario casinos, lets police feed a suspect's image into a criminal
database, looking for mug-shot matches.

The facial-scanning system at Pearson International is believed to be
the first in North America to operate at a port-of-entry airport.

RCMP confirm they use face scans when a suspicious person is spotted
and then detained to check his or her identity and criminal record.

There is no general video scanning of travellers at any time,
according to RCMP spokesman Michele Paradis.

But the RCMP did not respond to questions about whether it submits
videotape of a suspicious person to the mug-shot database without the
subject's knowledge, or the exact circumstances in which the
technology is used.

The system is from Imagis Technologies Inc., a Vancouver firm whose
chairman of the board is Oliver (Buck) Revell, former deputy director
of the FBI and an anti-terrorism expert.

Company advisers include Norman Inkster, former commissioner of the
RCMP and a one-time head of Interpol, and Reid Morden, who was
director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in the
late 1980s.

Morden was not able to speak about how the RCMP system works, but said
face scans are an effective tool against drugs, terrorism and
organized crime.

"I bet every time you went through Heathrow Airport, you didn't know
that if you walk up a certain ramp, somebody is taking a good look at
you," said Morden, chairman of the corporate intelligence unit for
KPMG consultants.

"But if you were faced, as the British are, with the kind of random
violence of the IRA, is that a justified invasion of your privacy? I
think it probably is."

Even so, rules will be needed soon for what he calls the "Wild West
that's out there" in new technology.

Huge political pressures and the fast pace of identity technology
development raise the risk of privacy invasion, said Morden, the
former CSIS boss.

"There's been a lot of criticism about our extremely porous border,
which has certainly raised the political temperature in the U.S.," he
said.

"I don't think we've had that same level of criticism from the people
who are counterparts of the Canadian agencies, the American
immigration service, the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency."

But political heat is on, and for Canada to change its reputation as a
gateway for illegal and often criminal immigration, borders must
tighten -- even while budgets are cut.

Low-manpower solutions like biometrics might prove irresistible even
though privacy advocates say they are invasive.

"People with privacy concerns, and legislators, will have to turn
their mind to what is an appropriate use of the technology and where
it can be used," Morden said.

Biometrics refers to the electronic identification of a person by
measuring distinctive biological characteristics such as faces,
fingers or hands.

Face recognition is popular because so many photos of individuals
already exist. But it is controversial.

Ontario's privacy commissioner launched an investigation into face
scanning at Ontario casinos after The Spectator revealed police were
secretly using their own high-tech system to find cheats.

That technology, from a different U.S. supplier, lets the OPP compare
images from live video surveillance inside the casinos to a digital
database of criminal mug shots.

As with all such systems, the image of a suspect can be captured on
video, digitized and then scanned against a database of facial images
for hits. The systems can search thousands of faces on file to produce
matches, according to what police have asked for.

The system is not foolproof and not as sophisticated as it is about to
become in the next six months, says Iain Drummond, chief executive of
Imagis.

Matches still need to be visually checked, but finding out who someone
is or whether they have a record can be done at near light speed.

"We use a mathematical process that picks up about 250 areas of the
face, looking for difference in gradation, things like curvature of
the eye socket," Drummond said.

A criminal might be able to change appearances, things like mustache,
hair colour, even some features with plastic surgery. But bone
structure does not change, making it possible to nab suspects who
otherwise would pass.

"They must sound to the public like they're engaged in some sort of
James Bond activity," says Gary Jonosko, a Lakehead University
professor specializing in surveillance.

"But this is a fairly common practice around the world. It's new to
Canada, perhaps, but not exactly new."

Face recognition emerged in the past decade, at first because England
needed to identify leaders of soccer hooliganism in the early 1990s.

Then it became evident how powerful a tool face scanning could be,
both to confirm identity and do surveillance.

For the past two years, the English community of Newham has scanned
faces in a pilot project with more than 300 cameras. They are hooked
up to a control room that scans passersby for matches with criminals.

Many businesses already use face scans to confirm customer identity,
and scans are emerging as a security check for automated bank machines.

Face scanning is also used internally by law enforcement agencies
across North America, including the RCMP.

About 30 regular RCMP detachments, including Newmarket, western Canada
and the Maritimes, use a different computer system from Imagis, which
includes face scans on booking.

When a suspect is fingerprinted, photographed and processed, the
system enters the data digitally into each detachment's database. This
means officers in a cruiser can later take a digital picture of an
offender and compare it with the local database.