Toyota Center in Kennewick to use facial recognition technology

KENNEWICK – Face-recognition technology that eventually could be used to identify criminals and terrorists will be tested Sept. 21 at the Toyota Center arena when the Tri-City Americans open their hockey season.

Researchers with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are testing the technology for the Department of Homeland Security, the Tri-City Herald reported Thursday.

Twenty volunteers will be the only people the cameras are trying to identify. Hockey fans who want to opt out can follow corridor signs to areas without cameras.

“If they didn’t want to be videotaped, they could very easily not be videotaped,” said Nick Lombardo, a PNNL project manager.

The test will use off-the-shelf video cameras to evaluate prototype software the national lab in Richland is developing for Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate. It works to make technology available to police and federal agencies such as the Border Patrol, Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

PNNL has purchased 46 seats at the arena for the test, PNNL engineer Marcia Kimura said. Information explaining the project has been mailed to season ticket holders.

It’s not the public’s faces that PNNL is interested in capturing. Rather, they’re trying to match still photos of PNNL staffers in the crowd.

“Basically, the crowd is background,” Kimura said.

Half the staffers have been told to just do what they’d normally do at the game. But others have been given instructions to walk in a particular direction around the concourse at certain times or stand in a concession line.

All will wear monitoring ankle bracelets that will signal when they are close enough to a camera to potentially allow their face to be recognized. That will help researchers know at what point on a video that detection technology could be able to find them.