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Your Face Is Not a Bar Code
Phil Agre has a solid essay opposing automatic face recognition systems in public areas. These uses are only going to increase, because the technology is cheap (enough) and appealing to authorities everywhere; it's good to have some arguments to hand for opposing the spread of the cameras.
These devices scan your face to determine bone structure, so facial hair, glasses, or anything else on the surface wont make a difference. The secret to defeating facial recognition systems is to either break your jaw and have it reset in a different position (not recommended) or to put things in your mouth (fill your cheeks and lips) that alter the structure of your face.
Reality has a liberal bias
The cameras are not going to be used as a definitive identification device. There is a margin of error with all forms of identification. Eyewitness accounts have been proven to be inaccurate numerous times in the past. The cameras are simply a tool to help law enforcement officers perform their job more effectively. They are NOT the judge, jury and excecutioner. They ARE an effective method of helping the police identify possible fugitives. I think anything that takes some of the strain off of law enforcement officers and increases police efficiency should be embraced with open arms.
The cameras aren't infringing upon anyone's rights. You ARE NOT entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy when you are in a public place. You ARE entitled to privacy within the confines of your home or private property. But that's not the issue. I don't understand how you can possibly be upset about someone taking your picture in public. If you've done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide, and applaud this system for making the streets safer for our children.
Slashdot: Open Source, Closed Minds.
Totalitarianism in this century is going to be a lot easier because the government won't have to employ tons of informants and security service personell. They can just use face recognition to watch everybody and find out who the dangerous people are or who the leaders of insurgencies are and then locate them and eliminate them efficiently without disrupting the daily lives of everybody else. Running a good security service was possible in low tech times but was a tremendous economic drain on any totalitarian country and required executing a lot of uneccessary people just to keep people on their toes.
We are seeing this put into practice, for better or for worse, in Israel. Let's ignore completely who's right and who's wrong in the whole thing (I don't want to get off topic). The Palestinans are still low tech and have to rely on generalized terror of the old inefficent kind that brings a lot more condemnation on them then they would like because it often kills people who are not involved in the conflict per se. The Israelis on the other hand have very good intelligence, possibly even face recognition that lets them locate leaders of insurgency groups and meticulously pick them off.
So in the future the world will enter an era of permanent stablity, for worse no doubt, because if you get out of line you can be effciently eliminated.
The only solution I can see to this is to put this kind of technology into the hands of civilians. Put together a big network of civilian owned face recognition systems and feed into them the faces of politicians and then watch what they do.
things are really starting to get tight. All of these stories about traffic cameras, facial recognition and monitoring cameras just go together too well. It seems like you can believe in one of two things:
1. This gradually closing surveillance net that will be able to track you anytime you leave your house is a result of the unwitting acts of many legislatures/public officials which result in "skynet". or
2. This really is a "boil the frog" approach by government to keeping tabs on everything. IOW, they really *are* out to get you.
I think that it's probably the first but the end result is the same. More people need to make their voices heard on this type of stuff. We here in America, in general, seem to depend on the media to out this kind of stuff but we should not be so lackidasical (sp?) about it. This really is important. Oh, btw, the "traffic management" cameras are just stupid. A highway isn't like a train where you can divert trains onto extra tracks. There just aren't any extra 6-lane highways laying around. Sure, you might "divert" traffic from the highway to surrounding streets but what do you think will happen when 6 lanes of traffic gets "diverted" to a 2 or 4 land suburban avenue.......
trying to stop a piece of software is ridiculous. (DMCA?) Its inevitable that information will become easier to collect. Society is becoming more transparent and that can be a good thing-
read some David Brin
Salon also had this to say
You know in all of my days dealing with all kind of people, the people I fear the most is law enforcement.
Sure, you can say "you should have nothing to fear if you aren't doing anything wrong." but that is the problem. Sometime you have to fear when you haven't done anything wrong. In some places you will be hounded becuase you're a white man in the black part of town. Other time, you're get pulled over becuase you drive a red car. Then you get a gun pulled on you and your life treated becuase some pig "don't like your kind."
It's like i was saying the other day to a friend "you have nothing to fear but cops." Think about it, when someone robs you, you have to right to fight back. If you fight back to a cop, they can kill you. Oh sure, it not all that bad, until you had a gun pointed to you by the protector of the law knowing his buddy would go right long with the story that you resisted assest. And you might make news, and you know what? People are going to say "yeah he should've been shot." Then media pumps the crime like every person walking around is a rapist, like everybudy is just waiting to rob you blind, or jack you when ever they get a chance.
I know there is crime, and I think it's bad, but when the police turns to law abidders and make crimes, that is where I draw the line.
The journey is better then the end.
Do you trust a security guard to make his own identification?
A security guard recognises a criminal from a mugshot on one of his cameras. He might be right, or mistaken. He'll have to check to be sure.
A piece of software flags a person as a criminal. It might be right or mistaken, but the security guard gets excited and tracks the "positive identification" down and bring him into the interrogation room to ask questions.
The big difference is that one guard is more likely to get lazy and simply rely on what he is told. Besides, XYZ corporation advertises a 99% accuracy, how can it be wrong?
because her kids would look at the underwear section. Now we are flooded with all types of much more graphic imagery from numerous sources. It's the onward march of technology, and we have to take the good with the bad.
I find it interesting that so many people here on Slashdot are opposed to the restriction of technology that may be used for fraudulent purposes, such as copying DVD's or bypassing software security features, but seem to have no problem pushing for restrictions on other technology that may be used for such sinister purposes as "strangers calling you by name" or "shops pulling up your credit report when you walk in."
This is the Age of Information. The shape of your face is just another piece of information. If we need restrictions, we should restrict uses rather than capabilities.
Read that again: We should restrict uses rather than capabilities. Try thinking about that concept in different contexts that are important to you: facial recognition, copyright protection, encryption, decryption. Does it mean the same thing in each context, or do you change your opinion based on whether the technology benefits YOU?
I have to close with this gem from the essay: "For example, the press cannot publish pictures of
most people in personally sensitive situations that have no legitimate news value." What?! And this guy is worried about Big Brother?
Evil is the money of root.
There is a logical departure in the comparison of using a finger print database in a crime lab as opposed to using a survielence system to identify faces. The essential thing that is needed to make the difference is a matter of context and to understand the difference between man and machine.
In the case of the fingerprints the police are dealing with evidence of a crime or some other police matter that they are trying to solve (e.g. a murder where the ciminal had already left the scene or a kidnapping.) Fingerprints are carefully taken from the scene and analyzed to determine facts that may lead to solving the case. This is a reactive measure in response to crime.
In the case of facial recognition systems evidence is being gathered for a crime that hasn't yet been comitted. Instead of working towards solving a case the information is being used to model an everyday situation where possibly no crimes are ever comitted.
A human is not a machine and a machine is not a human, they are two mutually exclusive wholes though they may share idosyncratic similarities. Human security gaurds working with cameras would never go to the trouble of even noticing every person who is in the store. Instead the human mind is drawn towards cues that focus the attention where it is needed so that a task (spotting criminals or criminal activity) can be performed. These cues can come from a wide varitey of sources; from the dream leaving their mind when they awoke in the morning to the past experience of working the job and having trained for years. The analog nature of these cues and how they play together is far from perfect, but the integral and wholistic foundation they rest on gives them a chance of nearing perfection.
The machine is decidedly different, as is its nature being merely a tool that extends human motive. No distinction is made between criminal activity and normal activity at any level in the system since it has to at least begin scanning every person as per its function. There is not a cue in the machine instead that is replaced with an event. The main difference being that an event exists unto itself and does not contain anything more than the sum of its parts. A good example of the difference between and event and a cue would be the event of someone blowing into your ear. As an event it is a simple set of actions, but as a cue to a human it represents a infinite set of integral properties.
The digital nature of the machine creates a vast departure from perfection. Perfection isn't even an issue when all you have is black and white since no integral whole can ever be aquired in such a harsh dialectic system.
So the end result, the difference is that we change from attempting to spot criminals and criminal activity in a system that can achieve near perfection to a system that merely identifies everyone and turns everyone into a suspect. This is contrary to humanity since our entire existence must be based on trust. Tools are only as good as those who use them, but humans strive for perfection out of instinct independent of their environment. It may seem that some individuals aren't perfect, but resemblance isn't the point. The fact that we take this infinte energy source of reality and derive more than 1's and 0's is.
To quote the movie Metroplois:
"Without the heart there can be no understanding between the hand and the mind"
Technology applied unabated crushes the heart. I hope that we can all come together and apply these new tools properly so that I may offer up a better tomorrow for my children.
I'm not really sure how you can believe knowing what everyone does in public at all times really makes the streets safer. All I can see is that is passes a greater amount of control into a smaller set of hands than ever before. If history is any indication of what will happen once too much control is concentrated too heavily I don't see happy things is store for us unless you like pain and suffering.
The best tool that the police/law enforcement could ever have in their fight against crime is the trust and support of the people at large. Using technology to track our every move in public is not the solid foundation of trust and will not serve to further their interests. It must also be remembered that all non-contiguous private space is sparated by either other's private space or public space. Basically this means that all your movements could be tracked between occupying personal private spaces under your standard. Barring some type of teleport device you would have no choice but to be tracked and monitored.
Another way to look at it is this: how would you feel if you started seeing someone romantically only to find out that they were having you watched. The surveilence was only performed when you were in public spaces or *cooperative* private spaces such as your work or a members-only gym. The results of this surveilance is that they know every where you went and all that you did/said in these places even all the names and total monitored histories of everyone you talked to. Now. Do you still have nothing to hide, even though you are a good person and do nothing wrong?
If you think that sounds bad now imagine instead of a romance it is a total stranger. We have a word for that in our newspapers, it is called stalking. Predators stalk prey, even if they fail to attack and kill. With a ubiquitous predator looking over my shoulder I feel far from safe, especially when it is one fly-swat away from confusing me with Harry Tuttle.
I'm not too concerned about face recognition technology being used by the government to track me. That would require that I've done something illegal, was caught, and my mug shots are in the system. Now, I doubt a government funded system will be powerful enough to track all the mugs of all the felons in America.
What concerns me are the Commercial applications of this kind of tool. We've all complained about how Doubleclick.com and other such businesses invade our privacy by tracking our web surfing habits. Well, imagine getting a membership card to someplace like Sams or Costco. They take your picture when you get this card. These stores have cameras. These stores have affiliates. Imagine if the corporate world decided it was a good idea to use this face recognition technology to follow consumers around and find out what their shopping habits are. The camera a the local grocery store may catch you lingering too long in the baby section, showing that you likely have children, or in the frozen section next to the ice cream, showing that you likely have a sweet tooth. Or maybe that surveilance camera at the convenience store will catch you lingering by the nudy magazine rack...
If you're really worried about this technology, don't be afraid of how the government will use it. The government has limits in budget and what it can get away with. Worry about the corporations.