How Accurate Is The New Facial Recognition Technology At Mall Of America?

Facial recognition software is now being used at Minnesota's Mall Of America. By entering the Mall of America, you consent to having your face scanned by security cameras.

The Mall says they don't keep records or information on non-persons of interest.

Officials with the mall say they are just scanning faces to find people of interest. They have a database, and if there is a match, they then follow up with three layers of human verification before they act. They say they aren't storing information, sharing private data, or even saving images of faces of non-persons of interest.

Why is the mall using facial recognition?

According to the information provided on their website, the mall is using it for the sole purpose of helping detect the presence of a person of interest. Who is a person of interest?

• people who are on the current trespass of Mall of America
• those who may be a threat to our environment
• persons identified by law enforcement
• people who are missing or may be in danger

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What are the chances of being wrongly identified?

The technology isn't perfect, but your chances of being wrongly identified are 1 in a million. That's the actual number the analysts provided. On average, the Mall of America has 40 million visitors each year. Going by those numbers, we can expect somewhere around 40 also positives each year.

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How successful is facial recognition at identifying a person of interest?

According to Kare11's story, for every 1,000 persons of interest scanned, the technology missed identifying 4.7.

Learn more about the security practices at the Mall Of America by visiting their website.