The Face of ‘the Other’: Biometric Facial Recognition, Imposters and the Art of Outplaying Them

In this chapter, I argue that the work done to of detect spoofers that takes place in biometric laboratories means that biometric researchers need to impersonate potential imposters in order to develop, what I have called ‘algorithmic traps’ to detect them. In this context, rather than simply being antagonists, researchers, public spoofers and hackers, and not least imagined spoofers, all enter into a form of symbiotic ‘mimesis’, a never to be resolved process of impostering that becomes productive in shoring up the funding for new biometric research and that further legitimizes the continuous search for what I call safer, more secure and seamless ‘bio-machines of security’.