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TECHNOLOGY Wednesday 29 July 2020
U.S. agency: Pandemic masks thwarting face recognition tech

By MATT O'BRIEN significant disparities across signed to scramble face
AP Technology Writer race, gender and age. detection systems. Then
Having a tough time rec- Add masks and the failure came the coronavirus out-
ognizing your neighbors rate rises to 5% or worse. break, when health experts
behind their pandemic When confronted with around the world began
masks? Computers are masks, the agency says, strongly encouraging ev-
finding it more difficult, too. "many otherwise compe- eryone to wear masks that
A preliminary study pub- tent algorithms failed be- cover the mouth and nose.
lished by a U.S. agency on tween 20% to 50% of the NIST's preliminary study says
Monday found that even time." what masks people wear,
the best commercial fa- Even before the coro- and how they wear them,
cial recognition systems navirus pandemic, some makes a difference to fa-
have error rates as high as governments had sought cial recognition systems.
50% when trying to identify technology to recognize The results are mostly un-
masked faces. people when they tried to surprising: The more facial
The mask problem is why This photo provided by the National Institute of Standards and conceal their faces. features that are covered,
Apple earlier this year Technology (NIST) shows digitally applied mask shapes to photos Face masks had become the harder it is to recognize
made it easier for iPhone and tested the performance of face recognition algorithms a hallmark of protesters in the person beneath the
owners to unlock their developed before COVID appeared. Associated Press Hong Kong, even at peace- mask.q
phones without Face ID. ful marches, to protect
It could also be thwarting technology to an era when drawing digital masks onto against tear gas and amid
attempts by authorities to so many people are wear- the faces in a trove of bor- fears of retribution if they
identify individual people ing masks. der crossing photographs, were publicly identified.
at Black Lives Matter pro- Some companies, includ- and then compared those The government banned
tests and other gatherings. ing those that work with law photos against another face coverings at all pub-
The National Institute of enforcement, have tried to database of unmasked lic gatherings last year and
Standards and Technol- tailor their face-scanning people seeking visas and warned of a potential six-
ogy says it is launching an algorithms to focus on peo- other immigration benefits. month jail term for refusing
investigation to better un- ple's eyes and eyebrows. The agency says it scanned a police officer's order to
derstand how facial recog- NIST, which is a part of the 6.2 million images of about remove a mask.
nition performs on covered Commerce Department, is 1 million people using 89 al- Privacy activists, in turn,
faces. Its preliminary study working with the U.S. Cus- gorithms supplied by tech have looked for creative
examined only those algo- toms and Border Protec- firms and academic labs. ways to camouflage them-
rithms created before the tion and the Department Under ideal conditions, NIST selves. In London, artists
pandemic, but its next step of Homeland Security's sci- says the failure rate for the opposed to high-tech sur-
is to look at how accuracy ence office to study the best facial recognition sys- veillance have painted
could improve as commer- problem. tems is only about 0.3%, their faces with geometric
cial providers adapt their It tested the software by though research has found shapes in a way that's de-

Garmin acknowledges

cyberattack, doesn’t

mention ransomware

By FRANK BAJAK tion keys that would allow
Associated Press Garmin to unlock the data
BOSTON (AP) — The GPS scrambled in the attack.
device maker Garmin Ltd. The person spoke on con-
acknowledged Monday dition they not be further
being victimized by a cy- identified. In this Jan. 7, 2015 file photo, Garmin’s Vivofit 2 fitness tracker is
berattack last week that The attack crippled com- on display at the Garmin booth at the International CES, in Las
encrypted some of its sys- pany services including Vegas. Associated Press
tems, knocking its fitness Garmin Connect, which is
tracking and pilot naviga- popular with runners and that it was freezing the as- affect the functionality of
tion services offline. It said cyclists for tracking work- sets of members of the any of its products, which
systems would be fully re- outs, and the FlyGarmin group. include fitness watches, it
stored in the next few days. navigation service for pi- Olathe, Kansas-based added.
In an online statement, the lots. A Garmin spokesper- Garmin said Monday that, Ransomware is a growing
company did not specify son said the company had in addition to GPS-based threat and experts say it
that it was the target of no comment beyond its services, customer support will only get worse if victims
a ransomware attack, in statement. and company communi- keep paying ransoms. In
which hackers infiltrate a The online cybersecurity cations were also interrupt- the U.S. last year, ransom-
company's network and news site BleepingComput- ed by the July 23 attack. ware attacks on state and
use encryption to scram- er identified the malware "We have no indication local governments, health-
ble data until payment as WastedLocker, which that any customer data, in- care providers and edu-
is received. But a person various security firms have cluding payment informa- cational institutions alone
familiar with the incident attributed to the Russian tion from Garmin Pay, was caused an estimated $7.5
response told The Associ- cybercriminal gang Evil accessed, lost or stolen," billion in damage, accord-
ated Press the attackers Corp. The U.S. government Garmin said in its state- ing to the cybersecurity firm
had turned over decryp- announced in December ment. The attack also didn't Emsisoft.q