Japan - photos can be used to fool the age-verification cameras on some vending machines..

July 9, 2008 - Starting in July 2008, companies owning cigarette vending machines can be prosecuted for the sale of tobacco to anyone under the legal age. The vending machines can employ an advanced facial recognition system to determine if the purchaser is of legal age to purchase cigarettes. It has been found that these machines treated underage people as adults and allowed them to purchase cigarettes when they showed wide-photos of older people to the machine. Of Japan’s more than 500,000 cigarette vending machines, around 4,800 (less than 1%) are equipped with age-verification cameras. The rest are outfitted with readers that check Ireland_ASH.jpg Reference: Yen portraits fool age-verification cameras, pinktentacle.com, 7/8/2008. Click on image to enlarge..