Technology thwarts driver’s license suspect

Anyone thinking of trying to fake out the folks who issue driver’s licenses might think again.

A Japanese citizen was arrested after he allegedly attempted to renew his brother’s expired Honolulu driver’s license at the city Motor Vehicle and Licensing Division’s Kapalama office in City Square Monday afternoon, police said.

The Tokyo man, 40, was caught when recently installed facial-recognition software alerted a city employee that the image of the person seeking a license renewal did not match facial features of the person’s previous license photo.

"It’s not like the old days," said Dennis Kamimura, Licensing Division administrator. "If you try it, you’re going to get caught."

For the program to work, however, the agency has to have something on file to compare it with, Kamimura said.

Someone who wants to renew a license needs to get a new photo taken. Before paying and being issued a license, the new photo is matched up electronically with the previous one through a facial-recognition program installed in January 2010, Kamimura said.

"It takes some measurements of a person’s face and will let us know if that individual is the same individual of the person in our files," he said. "In this case the clerk that processed the applicant said that there appeared to be a difference and called a supervisor."

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was contacted. Officials with that agency determined the suspect is legally here in the United States. Honolulu police were then contacted, and officers arrested him for investigation of second-degree forgery and illegal possession of another person’s ID.

Another person was caught trying to illegally obtain a driver’s license in recent months, but in that case the person tried to use fraudulent documents, Kamimura said.

The face-recognition technology is available in all counties through a statewide contract, Kami­mura said. Most states have the same technology, and there might eventually be a state-to-state program making it more difficult for people to obtain more than one license in the country, he said.