Why facial recognition tech failed in the Boston bombing manhunt

Ars Technica explains Why facial recognition tech failed in the Boston bombing manhunt

"In the last decade, the US government has made a big investment in facial recognition technology. The Department of Homeland Security paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to state and local governments to build facial recognition databases—pulling photos from drivers' licenses and other identification to create a massive library of residents, all in the name of anti-terrorism. In New York, the Port Authority is installing a 'defense grade' computer-driven surveillance system around the World Trade Center site to automatically catch potential terrorists through a network of hundreds of digital eyes.

But then an act of terror happened in Boston on April 15. Alleged perpetrators Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were both in the database. Despite having an array of photos of the suspects, the system couldn't come up with a match. Or at least it didn't come up with one before the Tsarnaev brothers had been identified by other means.

For people who understand how facial recognition works, this comes as no surprise. Despite advances in the technology, systems are only as good as the data they're given to work with. Real life isn't like anything you may have seen on NCIS or Hawaii Five-0. Simply put, facial recognition isn't an instantaneous, magical process. Video from a gas station surveillance camera or a police CCTV camera on some lamppost cannot suddenly be turned into a high-resolution image of a suspect's face that can then be thrown against a drivers' license photo database to spit out an instant match."