Israeli facial imaging programme 'recognises paedophiles and terrorists'

Israeli startup company Faception claims that it has developed technology that is able to identify a person's characteristics based upon a computer analysis of their face.

"Our personality is determined by our DNA and reflected in our face. It's a kind of signal," said Faception's chief executive Shai Gilboa.

"Our primary focus is homeland security and public safety.

The programme developed by Faception uses 15 classifiers that it uses to determine a person's character profile.

Such is their confidence in their new product, the Tel Aviv company has said that it's already signed a deal with a homeland security agency to help them identify "terrorists".

According to Gilboa, the technology has an accuracy of 80 percent for some traits, and was able to successfully identify conspirators involved in the November Paris attacks.

"Faception successfully identified the nine of them as potential terrorists, without any prior information apart from their facial images," Gilboa claims.

"That's why we signed a contract with a leading homeland security agency."

While the company claims the ability to distinguish the geniuses from the criminals, and the poker players from the white-collar criminals, it all raises profound ethical questions about biological determinism and the limits of technology in fighting crime.

This is something that Gilboa, who also serves as the company's chief ethics officer, believes can be addressed by using supplementary data to help identify criminals.

Despite this, there are many who still have reservations about the use of such data for spotting neerdoers.

"The evidence that there is accuracy in these judgments is extremely weak," Alexander Todorov, a Princeton psychology professor told the Washington Post.

"Just when we thought that physiognomy ended 100 years ago. Oh, well."

Faception chief executive Shaii Gilboa delivers a presentation about his product [500 Startups/ YouTube]