Florida Surveillance Cameras Claim a Victim

kris_lang writes: "The St. Petersburg Times has an article that describes how an innocent man was tracked down because he was used as a "demo" face for Visionics Face-It face recognition software with their on-the-street video surveillance system in Tampa's Ybor City district. The "demo" image was printed in the St. Pete Times, and then sold to U.S. News and World Report which used it in an article. A USN&WR reader in Oklahama misidentified the face as being that of her ex-husband wanted on felony child neglect charges. The Tampa Police tracked him down to his job site and interrogated him. Now here's a question: how did they identify him in the first place to be able to track him down? Well, Florida has also been using digital photos for their newer driver's licenses. So they already have a handy-dandy database to work with."

Comments

Re:Bigger Brother

[drc500free]

Let's not even joke about that. In many other countries (allegedly in China, for instance), government sanctioned torture still exists. IMHO, we should be happy that most of the readers of /. reside in countries where the paradigm is such that we can rightfully complain that video identification is a human rights violation, as opposed to fearing for our physical well being.

Re:Idea

[koolB]

While you're at it patent walking around with a bag on it as a form of encryption...