But is that a good thing?
It then compared their effectiveness by digitally adding masks to faces, and doing before/after tests.
To launch the tests, NIST used border crossing photographs and photos of applicants for immigration benefits.
Unsplash / Atoms
The algorithms are getting better.
With high-coverage masks, the failure rate rose to just 5%.
Even better, these algorithms falsely accepted no more than 1 in 100,000 impostors.
Getty Images / Matthew Horwood
This is a big improvement over the previous test done by NIST.
Some developers have submitted algorithms after the pandemic showing significantly improved accuracy.
Good News, Bad News
Clearly this is good news for phone users.
Face ID on the iPhone is something of a liability in COVID times.
With better accuracy comes easier access to your protected data.
But this improvement in recognizing masked faces also has its downsides.
In the U.K.,famous for its blanket CCTV surveillance, live facial-recognition cameras arebeing deployed byLondons Metropolitan Police.
Demonstrations are a legitimate form of protest, and recognized as such in democratic countries.
In 2017, aCalifornian golf tournament used camerasto scan attendees and screen VIPs for access to restricted areas.
This includes an Uighur alert feature that identifies people by ethnicity, and flags them to police.
You Cant Have it Both Ways
Were well aware of the old tradeoff between security and convenience.
Its convenient to have no password, or to use the name of your dog.
But its more secure to use a unique, complex (and hard-to-remember) passphrase.
Biometrics are already problematic for general ID.
Its easy to get a new credit card number if yours is stolen, for instance.
But if your fingerprints are compromised, youre screwed.
And at least fingerprints are easy to control.
you’ve got the option to wear gloves, or just not touch something.
Your face is out there in public, recordable by anyone.
And now, even wearing a mask wont help.
At least you dont have to pull out a credit card to pay for your groceries.
