How a Facial Recognition Mismatch Can Ruin Your Life

But even this method — undertaken in ideal conditions — remains vulnerable. No threshold currently exists for the number of points of similarity necessary to constitute a match. Even when agencies like the FBI do institute classification guidelines, subjective comparisons have been shown to differ greatly from examiner to examiner. And the appearance of differences, or similarities, between faces can often depend on photographic conditions outside of the examiner’s control, such as perspective, lighting, image quality, and camera angle. Given these contingencies, most analysts do not ultimately provide a judgment as to the identity of the face in question, only as to whether the features that appear to be present are actually there.