Hawaii expanding criminal facial recognition system
30 January, 2015
category: Biometrics, Government
MorphoTrak announced that after only a year in operation, access to Hawaii’s MorphoFace Investigate mugshot system is being expanded to all counties in the State. Hosted and maintained by the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center in Honolulu, the MorphoFace Investigate system has provided fast and accurate facial recognition searches, based on photos and videos.
The database contains more than 450,000 photos with known identities. The MorphoFace Investigate system is able to link a crime to a suspect by matching facial images, as well as link different crimes by matching similar facial images. The system can also be used to search for missing and wanted persons when a photo is available.
MorphoFace Investigate has enabled the Honolulu Police Department to identify previously unknown criminal suspects and homicide victims, as well as provide other critical investigative intelligence. It has also proven useful in analyzing image frames from video and closed circuit television to resolve identity theft cases.
The accuracy of Morpho’s facial recognition algorithms has been crucial to the use of this technology by Hawaii even with low resolution, poor quality imagery. Morpho’s algorithms scored in the top tier in recent NIST tests, which evaluate features significant to real world applications, including identification accuracy from a variety of image sources.
Law enforcement jurisdictions around the world are adding other biometric modalities to criminal databases to help identify subjects of interest. In addition to facial recognition, some are adding iris and systems that identify individuals from tattoos or scars.
