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Passport Officers’ Errors in Face Matching

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  • David White
  • Richard I Kemp
  • Rob Jenkins
  • Michael Matheson
  • A Mike Burton

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • David White & Richard I Kemp & Rob Jenkins & Michael Matheson & A Mike Burton, 2014. "Passport Officers’ Errors in Face Matching," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-6, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0103510
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0103510
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    Cited by:

    1. Gariup, Monica & Piskorski, Jakub, 2019. "The challenge of detecting false documents at the border: Exploring the performance of humans, machines and their interaction," International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 100-110.
    2. Marlena L Itz & Stefan R Schweinberger & Jürgen M Kaufmann, 2016. "Effects of Caricaturing in Shape or Color on Familiarity Decisions for Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(2), pages 1-19, February.
    3. Dana Michalski & Rebecca Heyer & Carolyn Semmler, 2019. "The performance of practitioners conducting facial comparisons on images of children across age," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(11), pages 1-17, November.
    4. Alice Towler & Richard I Kemp & A Mike Burton & James D Dunn & Tanya Wayne & Reuben Moreton & David White, 2019. "Do professional facial image comparison training courses work?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-17, February.

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