Liu Shuo, senior official with the Ministry of Public Security, said,"The facial recognition system performs best at border checkpoints where lighting and backgrounds can be carefully controlled."

The system is currently used in south China's Shenzhen and Zhuhai cities for an automated passenger clearance system at their border crossings, where both face and fingerprint scans verify the identity of immigration offenders and suspect arrivals, Liu said.

"Some people cannot have their prints scanned because age, labor or chemicals have worn them away," Liu acknowledged, noting that face recognition technology can be an efficient substitute to fingerprints in that case.

"With the combination of two kinds of biometrics, face and fingerprints, we can expect the face recognition software to be more accurate in determining that passengers are indeed the people their ID cards say they are," Liu said. Enditem

Editor:

Lin Li