Smile, you’re in Colorado.
The Centennial State has no beef with grinners when it comes to driver’s license photos.
This week, Virginia became the fourth state to tell motorists to wipe the smile off their license. That’s because a grin allegedly messes up new facial recognition software that states are using to search and compare records.
Colorado, however, was one of the first states to start using the technology that measures distance between eyes, the width of the mouth and other biometric cues.
And smiles, so far, have not been frowned upon, said Sandra Lowman, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Revenue, which oversees the Division of Motor Vehicles.
“We let people smile,” she said. “We were one of the first states to begin using the facial recognition in 2002, and smiles haven’t been a problem.”
Colorado makes drivers take off their glasses, however.
Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada and Virginia have enacted grin limits, and Washington state is developing a pilot program.
The European Union and several individual countries have imposed similar restrictions on passports since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The United States allows relaxed, unexaggerated smiles.
The facial recognition program, used by 37 U.S. motor vehicle licensing agencies, quickly searches licenses to ensure somebody doesn’t have more than one or is using aliases or stolen identities, officials said.
When a person applies for a driver’s license or to renew an expiring one, software can compare past photos.
If it seems over-reaching to ban a smile, then smirk at this: In a 2003 report on facial recognition software commissioned by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, researchers agreed that grins and grimaces can skewer the photo comparisons.
But so can a dramatic new hairdo, makeup, and growing or shaving a beard.
“Facial recognition has been shown susceptible to high error rates . . . when any of several variables are introduced into the matching process,” the report found.
“Such variables include the time lapsed between enrollment and matching, the angle of facial acquisition, lighting, distance, facial hair and glasses.”
