How Face Recognition and Digital Fingerprinting Are Creeping Into the U.S. Workplace

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AlterNet / By Tana Ganeva

Biometrics at Pizza Hut and KFC? How Face Recognition and Digital Fingerprinting Are Creeping Into the U.S. Workplace
Biometric technology is being used to more closely track low-wage workers, already desperate in a bad economy.

September 26, 2011 |


All summer, Lathem Corp. product marketing manager Tony Burks has been on tour, pitching the biometric company's line of face-scanning time clocks at trade shows around the country. In his presentations Burks moves toward the small device and then backs away, showing how FaceIN uses some of the latest advances in face recognition technology to assess his identity from up to three feet away.

FaceIN uses two cameras to map a worker's face, converting the width of their cheekbones, depth of their eye sockets, nose shape, and other unique facial features into an ID code. Every day after that, workers punch in by standing in front of a machine that recognizes them after a two-second face scan. Unlike the old-fashioned electronic password, FaceIN promises to tightly monitor when workers come and go, permanently banishing "buddy punching" from the workplace -- the time-honored practice of covering for a co-worker who may be running a few minutes late.

Identical twins can't con it, because, as Burks tells AlterNet over the phone, the two cameras that survey the face capture even slight variations in cheek plumpness and eyelid droop. As workers age, their FaceIN avatar ages with them. Changes to the face brought on by weight gain and weight loss are also clocked. "Let's say you gained 15 pounds next month," Burks says, "It would still recognize you."

Face-scanning time clocks were only introduced in the US in 2010, by companies like Lathem and Compumatic Time Recorders Inc, which outdoes Lathem by offering a time-clock that recognizes workers in the dark. But biometrics -- the science of determining identity through unique physiological features like fingerprints or the pattern of veins -- have been creeping into the American workplace for years. Fingerprint readers, retinal scans, and even machines that use palm pressure to ascertain identity are in use in workplaces ranging from the US Senate to hospitals to construction sites and restaurants. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/152539/biometrics_at_pizza_hut_and_kfc_how_face_recognition_and_digital_fingerprinting_are_creeping_into_the_u.s._workplace/