Facial Recognition Could Move Beyond Mug Shots

But if the woman hadn't had a minor traffic violation previously, she might have languished in the hospital, according to Sgt. Coello and the commanding officer of the New York Police Department's Real Time Crime Center want access to the Department of Motor Vehicles database of driver's licenses. Supervisors of the Facial Identification Section, launched as a pilot in 2011, see utilizing facial recognition to identify missing people as the next frontier of a technology that until now has been used mostly to identify potential suspects or witnesses for detectives investigating crimes. Critics say obtaining a DMV database--with thousands of photographs of innocent New Yorkers--raises serious privacy concerns. "The only way we can identify them right now is if they've been arrested," said Inspector Joseph Courtesis, commanding officer of the Real Time Crime Center, which oversees the facial identification section.