ICBC is crediting its two-year-old facial recognition program with helping to bust identity thieves who are using everything from fake names to dead children’s identities to get an illegal driver’s licence or a B.C. identity card.
Over the past two years, the insurance corporation has investigated 600 potential frauds – and convicted many of those people – by using the technology, which compares a cardholder’s photo with their existing image on file and an entire database of millions of photographs.
The technology analyzes facial characteristics that never change, such as the size and location of a person’s cheekbones and the distance between the eyes. In the past, ICBC would just compare the driver’s image to a photo on file.
"[The new technology] recognizes if somebody has a licence in another name, another licence in their own name or a prohibition on a licence," said ICBC spokesman Adam Grossman. "It’s too early to know the cost benefits but we’re catching some pretty serious cases."
Driver’s licences and ID cards are often used as proof of identity for persons wanting passports or entering a bar. But they are also increasingly being used for illegal purposes. ICBC invests about $8 million in investigating fraud cases each year.
In 2010, the new technology led to several convictions, including a woman who was prohibited from driving and took her road test in her sister’s name; an illegal immigrant in Surrey who had been deported for organized criminal activity and tried to get a licence in someone’s else name; and a Nanaimo resident who was found to have two different driver’s licences – with one of the identities used to obtain a B.C. driver’s licence belonging to a dead person.
Meanwhile, in Penticton, a man was ordered to pay more than $13,000 in restitution and received a one-year conditional sentence and one-year of probation for obtaining a B.C. driver’s licence in the identity of someone who had died at the age of five, back in 1969. The fraud went uncovered for 15 years before the facial recognition technology caught him.
Ben Shotton, ICBC’s manager of driver licensing integrity, said facial recognition technology allows security checks that were not previously possible. ICBC has a provincial team of 60 people who analyze the specific data as well as other types of frauds.
Grossman notes that in some cases, a computer match can be made by two people wearing similar glasses, but the human analysis will determine if they’re the same or not.
The technology is aided by the new B.C. driver’s licences, which are similar to passports in that they don’t allow people to smile so the face is more easily recognized. The new high-tech licences are harder to alter, forge or obtain using different identities.
"Identity theft everywhere in the world is becoming more of an issue so we knew we had to step up our level of protection for customers," Grossman said.
Identity theft costs the economy more than $2 billion each year.
ksinoski@vancouversun.com
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