In this talk I will present a summary of a decade-long project conducted by UNSW in collaboration with the Australian Passport Office to enhance security of passport issuance. Passports are the 'gold standard' identity document in Australia, but despite the introduction of machine readable chips, known vulnerabilities exist at issuance. Facial recognition technology has been used to mitigate this vulnerability since 2011, and while accuracy of this technology has increased markedly over this period, these checks continue to rely on a mixture of human and machine processes. I will describe evidence-based solutions delivered by this project, including personnel selection, training and workflow innovations.
Presenter: David White is a Senior Lecturer in the UNSW School of Psychology. He primarily studies individual differences in face perception ability, with a focus on identification tasks that are performed in everyday life and also in applied settings such as passport control, police investigation and criminal trials. He is an ARC Future Fellow and UNSW Scientia Fellow and has worked closely with a range of research partners including the Australian Passport Office, Reserve Bank of Australia, New South Wales Police and National Institute of Standards and Technology (US).