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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."
Yes, it is not the fault of the software, but the Florida surveillence cameras did claim a victim. Stop and think about it for a second. We have surveillence cameras pointed at ordinary, presumably innocent citizens. Combine constant surveillence and the fact that people tend to be stupid and stuff like this happens.
What happened was this:
1.Cops wanted publicity for shiney system, press wanted photos.
2. Some photographer took a photo, and the AP or some news wire requested it. It got sent, correctly captioned as saying "this mas is not a suspect".
3. Some intern at US News pulls the photo from the wire (I used to do this job in a major newspaper, stuff like this does get overlooked from time to time), redoes the caption, or perhaps forgets to include the caption, and it is sent to layout people.
4. Layout people redo the caption to suit space requirements and the focus of the story that accompanies it. They change the headline to the sensationalistic "You Can't Hide Those Lying Eyes in Tampa." and put the dudes face below it.
5. Magazine is published and read by an idiot. She calls cops.
I have not seen the caption of the photo, but I assume that the part about the dude being free of all suspicion was dropped to conserve space.
No matter whose fault it is, this still happened because we have cameras in public places, face recognition software enabled or not. This is a shining example to show to the people who support invasions of privacy what kind of harm they can really do, and it does a good job of eroding the "Well, if they aren't doing anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about" argument. This kind of crap is wrong, and the fact that the mistake was made by human eyes and not a digital ones does little to fix it, and little to sooth my worries
Actually, he made a joke about a "Tom Cruise missile" (Tom Cruise is one of the more visible members of Scientology, as is John Travolta). The "Church" worked very hard to keep all but very carefully selected phrases of Henson's out of court, removing all context from his comments.
Those who've lived or worked in places with "quote boards" should be well aware of how phrases can sound when taken out of context.
fencepost
just a little off
If Officer Friendly misidentifies me as a wanted felon, if the case proceeds to trial I'll get to examine him on the witnes stand and test his powers of face-matching.
Who do I subpoena when Amalgamated Profits, Inc.'s latest Eyewitless XP software flags me as being a bad guy? Can I have design docs and test records introduced into evidence? Can I make the prosecution track down every developer and engineer and bring them to the stand?
It's bad enough when cops with no understanding of physics are given radar guns and the ability to hand out tickets. (Did you know that radar waves won't reflect from a stationary metal surface, only a moving one? That was the testimony of a Baltimore County cop who ticketed me last year.) Now cops with no understanding of software failability are being given buggy software and the ability to drag people off at gunpoint based on its output. The fun's just getting started.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
That's what I want to know. Some random woman sees a picture and says "That's my husband!" Now, IANAL (maybe someday) but it would seem to me this woman should accept some responsiblity for mis-identfing this man. He was harassed wrongfully. What is this woman supposed to do--say "Oops!"? What in the world was this woman thinking?
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
Privact issues aside, A woman misidentified a photo of someone as her exhusband, who was wanted by police. Police want to use software to match mugshots of wanted crooks against surveillence photos off the streets. If a woman couldn't correctly ID someone she knew, how can the police expect an automated system to do the same?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
So the technology is already better at face recognition than a woman in Oklahoma. Technology: 1. Humanity: 0.
1984 is finally here?
No.
Now please proceed down the hall into room 101.
Thank you citizen.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Get a ream or red paper from your local office supply store.
Use your laser printer to print "big brother is watching you from this camera" in bold dark letters. You can also get some clipart of a suveilance camera and print that too.
Take a stapler, some tape, or wallpaper paste and paste this paper right next to (or above or below) any camera you happen to notice. Include ATMS, building security systems etc. Once the sheeple become aware of exactly how closely they are watched they may do something.
War is necrophilia.
If you ever walk around in a Florida city with cameras, wear a clear plastic bag around your head. If they identify you, sue them under the DMCA for circumvention of an encryption device (the plastic bag).
qslack.com
For those of us who were too young to have remembered the plot of this excellent movie, quite a bit of the plot revolves around an arrest warrant mistakenly circulated because of a 'bug' in the computer.
Bzzzz....
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I have to start with this comment. If you don't think that putting cameras like this on every street is a loss of a Right, then you are blind.
Obviously you don't know what the phrase "expectation of privacy" means. In legal terms, it means that you expect to be unobserved. In public (particularly a restaurant, sheesh), by definition, you can't expect to be unobserved.
We're not talking about being observed, or in other words seen. We're talking about being monitored, about having your face scanned and compared to a database. That is fundamentaly different than being observed. And it's very different than simply having your picture taken. "Expectation of privacy" is not a legal term. There is a "Right to privacy" in my legal dictionary which I think is what you're talking about. According to that, there is a right to privacy, in the absence of a reasonable public interest. Now, I'm not going to argue with you about the term "reasonable", but the fact is that this right of privacy does exist, even in public. I don't know where you get your legal advice, but I hope you didn't pay a lot for it.
So then, do you think that all police should be banned from the streets, unless there is a crime in progress? No policeman should be allowed to view you in public?
I never said that, why do you pretend that I've said something I haven't and then proceed to argue that non-existent statement? I don't think that we should ban police from the street, I'm talking about surviellance camers.
Check out AbiWord.
The woman couldn't identify her ex. Any wonder why they aren't together any more?
...I'll procrastinate tomorrow...
Face-recognition systems assume the opposite: you are a wanted criminal and only a null result on their database search proves you are NOT, in fact, a criminal.
Errr, WRONG. Face-recognition systems try to find matches from their criminal database. They don't ASSUME anything.
It's like that guy I watched on the Travel channel who works free-lance for casinos in Vegas. He has photographic memory, and remembers the faces of the people caught cheating in casinos. He drives around in his car, and the casino people feed suspected cheater photos to him wirelessly. He looks at the pic, and tells them if he was caught cheating before.
The memory guy hasn't proven the gambler is cheating -- he just flags that person as a higher possibility than the others, and they keep a closer eye on the guy.
I have a right to expect that I am assumed to be an innocent civilian until proven otherwise.
You do have that right. Some cameras with face-recognition software haven't taken that away. The only thing that can take it away is mis-use of the technology. For example, picking up every match from the database, and taking them downtown to the local precinct for questioning, without some other mitigating factors.
These things should be ruled unconstitutional.
It is not unconstitutional for you to be brought into a police precinct for questioning. And if you are wrongfully harassed, you have steps you can take to fight back.
IANAL, of course
Oh, of course...
"And like that
In the United States, there is a presumption of innocence. Face-recognition systems assume the opposite: you are a wanted criminal and only a null result on their database search proves you are NOT, in fact, a criminal. It's hard for us to be critical of these systems because, superficially, we don't want the bad people to get away. The pro-surveillance arguement is something like: "Well, if you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear". But it's not that simple: I have a right to expect that I am assumed to be an innocent civilian until proven otherwise. I should not have to prove my innocence on a daily basis. These things should be ruled unconstitutional.
IANAL, of course
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
The title of this post totally shows how DESPERATELY the editors want this to be an issue. When the software IDs someone incorrectly, fine.
INSTEAD, some lady in Oklahoma saw a picture of this guy, and said "That's my deadbeat ex!" This has no reflection on the software (which, BTW, I'm no fan of)
You hurt your cause when you present nondamning "evidence"
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Ask yourself this: would you care at all if some other schmuck in Florida was walking down the street, somebody thought that he was their long-lost ex-husband who had been negelcting the children, and reported them to the police, only to find out it was mistaken identity? Of course not.
I'll admit I would care less about that, but that is not what really concerns me. What concernes me is this:
Suppose there is a criminal who resembles me in basic appearance, buld, facial characteristics etc. (be honest, how many times have you mistaken at total stranger for someone you know) and I go off to the mall/movies/park/office and the software pegs me as the bad guy, and I get swarmed by police officers. But wait here comes the best part, four days later on my way to dinner downtown it happens again.
Now pretend it was you. is the computer controlled survailance future leading us towards utopia? Or towards the Orwellian future you would rather choose to ignore.
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance" --Thomas Jefferson
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin
The plundering of our rights and freedoms are never made in massive steps, but in small nudges (i.e. more restricted copyright laws lead to the DMCA) No one was told that "Communism/Lenninism/Socialism" was only a sugar-coated prelude to the murder and fear of Stalinism. And anyone who doesn't think that we in the US, or any other democratic/republican/parlimentary statis is immune to this, then they have fogotten the first thing taught to them in history class: "Thos who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it"
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
- Police install cameras
- Police take picture of guy
- Police put guy's picture in a magazine
- Woman buys magazine, reads article
- Woman believes (mistakenly) that guy in picture is her ex and calls police.
- Police go after man
- Man gets angry
I don't see any mention of face-recognition software anywhere in that list (nor the article). The fact that the cameras were on the street is largely inconsequential because I've seen cameras on many, many, many pieces of public (and private) property in the Seattle area. None of these are hooked up to face-recognition software (AFAIK) and they can be used to find criminals just as easily.marotti.com
OK, not that I agree with the system but realize that the SNAFU was really the wife's doing. The surveillance system was the means of observation. Couldn't she just as easily have seen him in the background of a live news broadcast or something and have the same result?
-just my 00000010
Of course, if I were here husband, now would be a good time to move to Florida AND take on the fake identity of the man accidentally questioned. Lightening rarely strikes twice - and the legal suits which (undoubtedly) this guy will try to put forth against the police will deter them from ever investigating him regarding some event even remotely related to this trial for a while.
You say you want a revolution?
I'd like to see someone start selling cheap masks of the folks on the FBI 10 most wanted list. We could wear them while walking/driving around cities that use this technology.
Here, we are seeing Government going beyond its Constitutional role to harass an innocent man. It really bothers me to see so many people in this forum say, "So What?". The "What" is that a person should not have to fear that the Government will randomly pick you out of the crowd and threaten you! Questioning is a form of Governmental threat because you know if you don't get the answers right or look the wrong way, you go to jail until you deplete your bank account on a lawyer -- plus as a bonus, when you are found innocent, you don't get reimbursed for your expenses.
If anything in the US, the cameras should not be trained on private citizens but on public officials. They are the real criminals. I would love to have the bright light of sunshine pound down on each and every politician -- focusing in on the actions they commit during their waking hours.
Frankly, as far as I am concerned, Uncle Sam should go have marital relations with himself. Its so sad to see the "Freest Country on the Planet" resort to this Fascist behavior. Even worst are the bleating sheep that think these cameras are a "Good Thing®".
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Well, in this very article there was a crime across the country and the police bothered this guy, so, yes.
As far as being "swarmed", in a recent case of a Cult of Scientology critic who was prosecuted for humorously threatening their religion with a Tomahawk cruise missile and fled to Canada to seek religious asylum, the CoS turned him in to the police in Canada and he and his wife were arrested by a fully-armed SWAT team in the middle of a crowded parking lot.
I think the situation would have been a whole lot worse for this guy from Florida if his face had matched up with Osama Bin Laden's, or someone like that. It would be real easy for someone to get hurt in situations where the police get very excited very quickly.
Is this worse than just mistaken identity from a "Wanted" poster? Maybe, maybe not. The possible reach of a mistaken identity is a lot farther, since now your photo can be compared everywhere around the country rather than just in your town. The chances of you looking like a criminal in some jurisdiction is higher than the chance that you look like someone in your own town, you know.
And if that weren't enough, I have problems with people assuming that I'm guilty when I go somewhere. A surveillance society assumes that everyone is just waiting to do something wrong. I'm pretty sure that's not the sort of attitude we want to be fostering.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Yes, yes, and yes.
The cops bother anyone that they can, and unlike the courts they generally consider you guilty until proven innocent. That's their job. Obviously you haven't been questioned by the cops lately.
The officials will call this an accident, the system is so new, this will never happen again, yadda, yadda, yadda. Welcome to 1984, a bit late, but nevertheless my warmest welcome. While this system might be used for good, it also introduces a complete new level of observation which can lead to some pretty funny things. Like employer (official agencies in the first place) research. Oh, Mr. Anderson, you have a second life. During the day you are a computer programmer at xxx and during the night you are known as Neo, Cyberpimp, we cannot hire you for the new job ... and so on, just let your imagination play a little ...
I've got a deal for you, why don't you and everyone else who doesn't mind being monitored 24/7 just wear a radio collar so the police can keep up with you and make sure you're not doing anything wrong. The rest of us will just continue with our lives as they are.
The only people who don't want this are 1) criminals, and 2) people who cheat on their spouses and don't want to get caught.
Wrong! The only people who do want this are the sheep who don't understand that by agreeing to this kind of thing in the name of public saftey, they are slowly giving up every shred of personal freedom they have. Another poster said it, but's it's worth repeating, Rights just don't disappear, they're slowly eroded away over time.
Check out AbiWord.
I think one of the most basic freedoms in the US is to be free of government surveillance unless there is at least some evidence (ahead of time!) that a crime has been committed. Otherwise, mistakes may happen, and apparently they often end with innocent people in prison - even on death row. Certainly DNA testing has recently borne this out on numerous occasions.
The Fourth Amendment must be used to prevent such invasions of privacy, or we'll slide down the slippery slope until we're living in a country that'd make the old Soviet Union look open and enlightened.
On a somewhat related note, I'd be very wary of a government that repeatedly calls for more police and prisons, even though the crime rate has been going down for years. (This same government has also decided to artificially inflate the crime rate by pursuing an unwinnable "war on drugs"...and is using that as an excuse for all sorts of excesses including confiscating vast amounts of private property.)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
In particular, they took a photo of this guy, published it and sold it without getting a model release. As a direct result of their actions, he ended up if not in trouble with the police at least in the appearance of trouble.
In the USA these days, odds are good that if he sues them (if nothing else, the model release issue gives him legal grounds) he'll get either a significant settlement or a significant award in a trial. In publishing this, I'm sure the SPTimes is hoping to a) keep him from pursuing them and/or b) reduce the amount of sympathy he could get from a jury. It's not a retraction of the earlier story because there's really nothing to retract, but given the nature of the previous story this is about as close as they could get.
Maybe the above marks me as cynical, and I'm sure that's not the only motivation (and it may well not even be a key one - if it was would it be admitted by anyone?), but I'm sure that editorial staff there are aware of it.
fencepost
just a little off
In college, I was doing research on the fall of Democracy in Chile. What fascinated me about the subject was how Chile, which had been a democracy for about a century, had become a military dictatorship. More importantly, I wondered if such a thing could ever happen here.
It turns out that there is an entire series of volumes titled The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. There are volumes dedicated to Europe (e.g., Nazism in Germany), Latin America, a couple of more general texts, and a single volume dedicated just for Chile. And the entire scope of this series was summarized best by Julius Caesar over two thousand years ago:
All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
Or, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Or the great Benjamin Franklin quote above: "Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for security deserve neither." They get neither, as well.
We can't trust a government to do anything right. Why do we? Would you trust a bunch of complete power-greedy strangers to feed and clothe your children? Government has to be kept on a very short leash. If you do not set up and defend strict limits on the power officials can have and how long they can have that power, government will get too big for its britches. And if you give them more power than they deserve for more "security," you will find yourself walking down the streets, accosted by policemen. Or arrested without habeas corpus -- or bail.
I can tell you first hand how much controvery this has spurned in the greater Tampa Bay area. The cameras were installed quite awhile ago, and have been used as passive crowd surveilance to help the police monitor and track criminal activity on the busy streets of Ybor City.
The cameras on the street are not hidden whatsoever, and with the media hype that surrounded their installation, I would imagine the larger percentage of people who live in that area, were aware of them being there.
Unfortunately, mistaken criminal recognition problems are going to arise anytime the only verification method used is cameras in a surveilance environment. I think the main goal now should be to make sure that mistakes are recognized before law enforcement contacts alleged offenders. If there had been even the most minimal of checks and balances involved in the investigation of the gentleman in this article, the problem would most likely have been averted.
- tre
http://piclabs.com
Having things to hide does not necessarily mean you have ILLEGAL things to hide.
My visits to a political party's headquarters,
a planned parenthood center, or my girlfriend's
house should not be monitored by the government, period.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
His truck had been stolen, but later recovered. However, the police had neglected to remove it from the 'stolen-cars' database. The result is that he was pulled over, roughly pulled from his car, and handcuffed for several minutes until the problem was sorted out.
Sorry, I'm not buying it.
If someone had mis-identified me, that would be one thing. If they'd mis-identified me, taken a picture of me, and printed it in a magazine with a caption suggesting that I was a criminal, I'd be pissed. Justifiably so, I think.
Furthermore, don't forget that the police weren't just walking around with a copy of that magazine for the hell of it: they were summoned there by a local who saw the picture in the paper and recognized the guy. From now on, there's the off chance that someone bumping into this guy is going to remember that picture, and suppose that he's a criminal.
Take this hypothetical - what would you do if your name and likeness were "accidentally" added to a list of sex offenders, a la "Megan's Law"? It's one thing to get yourself removed from the list, but what happens if you bump into someone who remembers you from that list? Say, "No, really, it was all just a big mix-up?" You're already a perv and a freak in the eyes of the suspicious.
I got one for you:
Getting a ticket for being on a nude beach,
where nobody at all is complaining, can make
you a "Sex Offender", no different in certain
eyes than if you raped their 5 year old daughter.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
If this is the same Orwellian universe in which law enforcement has routinely used illegal wiretaps, the FBI has illegally infiltrated and monitored left-wing activist groups, the NSA may monitor global electronic communications, the FBI maintained massive files on citizens based on the whims of a perverse director, and people during the 1950s were harrassed by Congress and denied employment based on their constitutionally protected political beliefs (which they may or may not have actually held), the government tested the effects of radioactive material on humans without their knowledge or consent (and conducted other horrendous experiments as well)... If that's the Orwellian universe you're talking about, then, yes, this is important and I am concerned.
Governments in the US, all the way from the federal level to the local level, have a terrible history of abuses. The potential for abuse here is huge, and the temptation to abuse it will be even larger. I cannot think of a single technology available to law enforcement that has not been used to violate the rights of citizens in some way or another, and I see no reason why this technology will be any different. We have a lot to lose here and very little to gain. Why take the risk?
I'm noticing a reach-out-and-touch-someone trend here...whether through photographs or 'helpful' virii, why can't I just be left alone? I'm starting to feel like the woman that used to send my company letters about people watching her and having sex on her lawn (including Bill Gates, hmmm...). I think I'll go lock myself in the closet now.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
it is now a crime to look like somebody else who is a criminal!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney