Via Bruce Schneier, this story about a test of facial recognition systems in Germany.

“Face Recognition Test Results
For a few months, German police tested a face recognition system. Two hundred frequent travellers volunteered to have their faces recorded and three different systems tried to recognize the faces in the crowds of a train station. Results (in German): 60% recognition at best, 30% on average (depending on light and other factors).”

Perhaps this comment summarizes it best:

“Yawn. Automatic face recognition again. It just doesn’t work except in highly controlled conditions, and as this test shows, not well enough even then: with a self-selecting group of peop;e who wanted to be recognised (or didn’t mind if they were recognised) it could only manage 60% at best.
The face isn’t even a reliable way to identify people, as personal experience shows. On the one hand, people look like each other; on the other hand, people’s appearances change, deliberately or fortuitously, enough to confuse a computer program.
Face recognition is one of the things humans can do better than computers, and even we aren’t 100%”