These questions come up and I always wonder about the edge cases. I'm an identical twin. My twin can get get past my faceID consistently, from first release until today. What happens when twins with bad blood start abusing facial recognition?
What kind of abuse are you imagining? Presumably with this system, the TSA agent's query is like: "Does this person's photo match the photo for the identity they are claiming to be?", and not do something like compare your face to every other person's face and return the most likely identity for your face.
So, in that instance, your evil twin could steal your ID and travel as you, but they could do that before this system was in place anyway.
The article mentions a "one to many" system which is exactly this - it compares you to every face in the database and decides who you are, eliminating the need to show physical ID.
Unless both twins are flying on the same day, you could solve this by rejecting matches of people who don't hold a boarding pass for that airport.
Or you could just require a physical ID as backup if the system can't return a match (due to identical twins or otherwise).
Other signal will be fused in. Otherwise, you’re counting on the possession of your government credentials as the control. You could just as easily swap IDs.
Leakage is expected, leading to iteration on edge cases. Some leakage will always be inevitable, no system is perfect.
The legal system is the final recourse mechanism if malicious activity (identity fraud) is detected.
Currently you need to look kind of close and have the other person's ID. With the 1:many pilot it would just check your face against a database of ID photos of PreCheck enrolled travelers, so you only have to be at the right place at the right time, and look very close. Not a huge concern in general, but for an evil twin it's much easier to get past TSA if they know which plane their twin will take.
Present state. They are moving towards facial recognition with no need for ID presentation or boarding pass. No need for the ID when they have your photo on file (this is how Global Entry re-entry kiosk works), and your identity is tied to airline PNR.
Even if someone totally unrelated who looks a lot like you is caught in the act by facial recognition, it can be really bad. “Here are videos of the defendant caught on the act of three separate crimes!” can be pretty convincing when you’ve been dredged up as the closest match.
Touch ID alone should suffice, identical twins have different fingerprints. Similar, but not identical. There's some amount of entropy captured in the womb which affects their development. [1]
> Fingerprints aren’t included in these genetic similarities. That’s because the formation of fingerprints is dependent on both genetic and environmental factors in the womb.
> The chances of identical fingerprints in identical twins is slim-to-none. While anecdotal articles online often discuss the possibility of a chance that the science could be wrong, no research has found that identical twins can have the same fingerprints.
> [...] As a result, identical twins may have similarities in the ridges, whorls, and loops in their fingerprints. But upon closer examination, you’ll notice differences in some of the smaller details, including spaces between ridges and divisions between branch markings.
