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I worked for Viisage Technology for a couple of years, and they use a system in the building where two cameras scan for faces in the hallway (as you're approaching to enter) and if a face found matches one in the employee database, it unlocks the door.

It was sophisticated enough to identify me as me even when I was wearing my eyeglasses, and later, when I grew a goatee type beard and moustache. No ID code to enter, no badge to carry. If you didn't match anyone in the database, it would summon security and leave the doors locked.

Having run their Technical Support Department for 2 years, I can tell you that the products not only work, but work very well. They use the facial recognition in Massachusetts at the Department of Transitional Assistance (Welfare) offices to identify those people obtaining multiple ID's under assumed names to weed out Welfare fraud.

The kind of access system they have in their entry could be used in an airport entry to identify a suspected terrorist trying to move about the country and alert security. It's pretty close to an Orwelian concept, except this type of monitoring would definately have oversight by a committee or White House office to prevent civil rights abuses.

I personally am against the idea on principle, but sometimes one principle takes precedence over another.

I worked for Viisage Technology for a couple of years, and they use a system in the building where two cameras scan for faces in the hallway (as you're approaching to enter) and if a face found matches one in the employee database, it unlocks the door.

It was sophisticated enough to identify me as me even when I was wearing my eyeglasses, and later, when I grew a goatee type beard and moustache. No ID code to enter, no badge to carry. If you didn't match anyone in the database, it would summon security and leave the doors locked.

Having run their Technical Support Department for 2 years, I can tell you that the products not only work, but work very well. They use the facial recognition in Massachusetts at the Department of Transitional Assistance (Welfare) offices to identify those people obtaining multiple ID's under assumed names to weed out Welfare fraud.

The kind of access system they have in their entry could be used in an airport entry to identify a suspected terrorist trying to move about the country and alert security. It's pretty close to an Orwelian concept, except this type of monitoring would definately have oversight by a committee or White House office to prevent civil rights abuses.

I personally am against the idea on principle, but sometimes one principle takes precedence over another.

I worked for Viisage Technology for a couple of years, and they use a system in the building where two cameras scan for faces in the hallway (as you're approaching to enter) and if a face found matches one in the employee database, it unlocks the door.

It was sophisticated enough to identify me as me even when I was wearing my eyeglasses, and later, when I grew a goatee type beard and moustache. No ID code to enter, no badge to carry. If you didn't match anyone in the database, it would summon security and leave the doors locked.

Having run their Technical Support Department for 2 years, I can tell you that the products not only work, but work very well. They use the facial recognition in Massachusetts at the Department of Transitional Assistance (Welfare) offices to identify those people obtaining multiple ID's under assumed names to weed out Welfare fraud.

The kind of access system they have in their entry could be used in an airport entry to identify a suspected terrorist trying to move about the country and alert security. It's pretty close to an Orwelian concept, except this type of monitoring would definately have oversight by a committee or White House office to prevent civil rights abuses.

I personally am against the idea on principle, but sometimes one principle takes precedence over another.

"Domestically, Viisage products annually produce more than 20 million identification documents at more than 1,500 locations in 13 states."

"MGM Grand Las Vegas has adopted Visionics Corp's FaceIt-enabled Griffin G.O.L.D. face-recognition casino security system, following The Venetian and Bellagio's adoption of the product earlier this year. Griffin Investigations, a provider of gaming security information, has an on-line database with over 30 years of intelligence data, which casinos to match suspected individuals at gaming tables, in real-time, to a database containing photographs of all types of known casino cheaters, card counters and their associates."

Any questions?

St. Petersburg Times - Tampabay: Cameras scanned fans for criminals. Super Bowl fans had their privacy invaded by the technology, critics say. Law officials cite security.

Is the new surveillance system the latest twist on Big Brother? Face-matching surveillance already is well established at more than 70 casinos. But the system's biggest opportunities lie in more benign functions: Identifying customers at ATMs or participants in welfare programs, and screening people who want to enter secure workplace areas.

At Raymond James Stadium, surveillance system cameras were focused only on people entering at turnstiles. No cameras were used inside to pan the fans inside. But cameras did sweep the crowds at the NFL Experience, indicating the growing reach of database systems to try and match faces even in large groups.

At UCLA, professor Borgman questioned the technical ability of a system to identify individual faces so quickly.

"If these surveillance systems spread, there may be a considerable margin of error in determining the identity of people who get snagged," she said. "And that is a big price to pay for your civil rights."

The FaceTrac(TM) core facial recognition technology provides the ability to locate faces, to build 'face print' templates and to recognize matches to images stored in a database. When integrated with G-TEC's law enforcement database, FaceTrac(TM) allows rapid search, comparison and identification of suspect facial photos within the database. FaceTrac(TM) may be used for surveillance with multiple locations networked to a high capacity site, for analysis and system-search results. G-TEC installed FaceTrac(TM) at the Raymond James Stadium as a single site system, integrated with a custom designed database and search result notifications for tracking faces in a crowd and monitoring access to secure areas.

The system used for the Super Bowl project, first reported yesterday by the St. Petersburg Times, was lent by companies seeking to market the technology to law enforcement agencies. Tampa police accepted the free use of the system as an experiment and worked with local and national police agencies to manage it during the week of the game, said Durkin.

Dave Watkins, managing director of Graphco Technologies Inc., said the event gave the company a chance to learn how the software would perform, which camera angles were most effective and how the lenses of the 20 video cameras should be focused in a public place.

The American Civil Liberties Union("ACLU") opposes the involuntary capture of biometric details, such as face-recognition data, DNA and retina scans. The organization, in its list of "Privacy Principles," considers the fingerprinting of convicted criminals a worthy exception.

"We are quickly moving to the point where law enforcement and the private sector will be able to identify us no matter where we go, no matter how anonymous we think we are," said Barry Steinhardt, the ACLU's associate director. "Not only is it going to rob us of our anonymity, but it's going to be used as a tool of law enforcement to round up 'the usual suspects' and to hassle people on the streets."

The practice is almost certainly legal, but it is in an emerging area of the law that has not been fully tested in court, said Harvard Law School professor Bill Stuntz.

Super Bowl 2001 fans were secretly treated to a mass, biometric scan in which video cameras tied to a temporary law-enforcement command centre digitised their faces and compared them against photographic lists of known malefactors.

Everyone entering Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida last Sunday was subjected to the surveillance system cameras, set up at the entrance turnstiles. No notice or disclosure was ever given, and no one, therefore, had an opportunity to decline to enter the stadium if they should have objected to this unprecedented treatment.

[ ... ]

"The Company's face-recognition technology is unique because of its capabilities of both rapid and accurate real-time acquisition as well as its scalability to databases containing millions of faces. Therefore, the software can instantly calculate an individual's eigenface from either live video or a still digital image, and then search a database of millions in only a few seconds in order to find similar or matching images."

'Similar or matching.' This clearly acknowledges the possibility that innocent civilians going about their peaceable business may be stopped, hassled, even arrested, merely for resembling someone naughty. This raises sticky issues regarding the presumption of innocence many of us were encouraged to believe in during our grammar-school civics lessons. Is there a violation of this principle when a person is required to produce evidence that they are not, in fact, the evil bastard whom they unfortunately resemble?

Unknown to the 100,000 people who passed through the turnstiles at Sunday's Super Bowl, hidden cameras scanned each of their faces and compared the portraits with photos of terrorists and known criminals of every stripe.

In a command post at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., the digitized images of fans and workers were cross-checked against files of local police, the "FBI" and state agencies at the rate of a million images a minute.

The cameras identified 19 people with criminal histories, none of them of a "significant" nature, Tampa authorities said. But the undisclosed first test of the technology at a major U.S. sporting event raised arguments about privacy versus security and questions about the future of such spying and its uses.

"Oh my God, it's yet another nail in the coffin of personal liberty," said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technical officer of "Counterpane" Internet Security Inc., a security monitoring company.

"It's another manifestation of a surveillance society, which says we're going to watch you all the time just in case you might do something wrong," said Schneier, whose book "Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World" warned of the increasing encroachment on civil liberties in high-tech society.

[ ... ]

Other applications are expected to include ATM machines and public events such as the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

In New Zealand the government said phoey at a Life Time Licence and brought in a digital driver licence mostly for the reasons of disqualified drivers using friends licences.

They're protecting us from them

Unfortunately the old licence had no photo (just name/address/DOB/eyecolour) so they had a perfect excuse for the photo (and thus the choice to record it in any media). Maurice is Minister of Transport and IT... we have a combined Police/Traffic force.

In my town i've seen the current police surveilance camera's, their resolution is scary. Some facial recognition and they could get all those bad guys.


9/9/99 and i'm moderating, huh.