Asian man's passport photo rejected as computer thought his eyes were closed

A man of Asian background had his passport photo rejected by a New Zealand government website
Because computer thought his eyes were closed.

Richard Lee, who was born in Taiwan but raised in New Zealand, ran into trouble when he tried to renew his passport.

He was trying to renew his passport, but received an awkward error message when he submitted his picture to Internal Affairs's online passport photo checker.

'The photo you want to upload does not meet our criteria because subjects eyes are closed,' the message read.

He later told by Department of Internal Affairs that the photo was rejected because of “uneven lighting on the face.”

He added - 

“No hard feelings on my part, I’ve always had very small eyes and facial recognition technology is relatively new and unsophisticated,” 
“It was a robot, no hard feelings. I got my passport renewed in the end,”