Face the facts

ID cards 'fundamentally flawed' says face recognition expert

Plans for identity cards are "fundamentally flawed" because people are so bad at comparing mug shots to living people, a scientist has warned. Face recognition expert Dr Rob Jenkins said computers found it just as hard to accurately match photographs of strangers to real people. In tests, volunteers asked to identify faces from a photograph usually fail a third of the time, he said. "These limitations have profound implications for today's surveillance society," Dr Jenkins, a psychologist at Glasgow University, said.