#1027 Say Cheesy

On the face of it, it’s one of those innocuous little stories that give folks a chuckle. The State of Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is using new facial recognition software for their drivers’ licenses and it doesn’t like smiles.
Smiles, particularly those showing teeth, mess up the program, so people getting driver’s licenses are told, when posing for their pictures, not to smile.
Ha Ha . Pretty funny. Driver’s Licenses are bad pictures anyhow, now you want us to grimace.
The reporter in the article commented snarkily that now driver’s licenses will look like mug shots. You know what? He’s absolutely on the money. If you are comparing two pictures with facial recognition software to determine if they are the same person, and if one of the pictures is a mug shot, chances are he or she won’t be smiling.
No one smiles for a mug shot.
And that’s the insidious side of this whole thing. Facial recognition software isn’t needed to issue a driver’s license. When you go to the DMV to get a license, they don’t compare your picture with all the other pictures they took in the past.
You could have grown a beard or a mustache, shaved your head, gained 75 pounds, or added glasses and bushy eyebrows. The point is you don’t have to look like you used to look.
So what are they using this facial recognition software for? When a police officer stops you and checks your I.D. he or she looks at the picture and compares it to your actual face.
When you use your I.D. to cash a check or get into a bar, it’s the same thing. It’s compared to your smiling face right then and there. All kinds of other security features to prevent fraud, like bar codes and holographs, are part of your license.
They’re telling us not to say cheese when they take our picture, but something else smells pretty cheesy is you ask me. Someone, somewhere, is putting together a database with actual pictures of us.
Which means we are all getting mug shots whether we’ve committed a crime or not.
Car 1984 where are you?
America, ya gotta love it.