ACLU Examines Face-Recognition System

nate_drake and others wrote in about an ACLU report on face-recognition (PDF) (see also their press release and an MSNBC article). We've posted several previous stories about the Tampa police using face-recognition systems at the Super Bowl and on the streets of Ybor City.

Comments

I can't tell who I'm looking at . . . .

[actappan]

So really, how well can this work? Half the porple I know look completely diferent from day to day anyway . . .

But take this for an example:

Soon after Sept 11th one of my colegues flew east on a buisness assignment. He was concerned because, as he said "Did I forget to mention, I look like one of those terrorists?"

He did, a little. Darker complextion, goatee, curlly hair, glasses. He looked more than a little like one of the suspects.

He's sinced shaved his goatee, so he no longer looks like that . . . but would this system have been abel to diferentiate?

I also seem to remeber that one of the guys they arested and incarcerated in Tampa turned out to be the wrong guy . . . .

Re:I can't tell who I'm looking at . . . .

[jeffy124]

He's sinced shaved his goatee, so he no longer looks like that . . . but would this system have been abel to diferentiate?

given what some people said in the MSNBC article, your friend would be fine

glasses, mustache, beards, longer hair, lighting, even turning 15 degrees were enough to foil the system.

Lie detectors.

[ImaLamer]

After they take these digenerate pieces of sh*t down they need to go after the 'lie detectors'.

Soon we will have a camera on the market which is *AS* reliable as a polygraph test. 25% of the time they are wrong.

All of these things are a Bad Thing. These cameras will be used next to track you at the game [like the Bears? get calls at dinner about season ticket prices], at the bar [you like to go to bar!], at the strip club [the cops watch you now because they know you're a perv!]...

Just wait till this stuff goes all private!

Reminds me of Demolition Man

face recognition has better uses

[cmckay]

The ACLU attacks face recognition when it is used to find criminals among the general public. (In other words, the system flags an individual as "suspect" if their face is found in a database of images).

I think a much better use would be in an access-control situation-- flag someone as suspicious if their face is NOT in the database.

It isn't too difficult to socially engineer your way into a building if you don't work there. But if employees were required to look at a camera for a split second before passing by the security desk, it would be much easier to identify those who don't belong (especially in large companies).

No, I don't think face recognition is accurate enough yet, but there are legit and non-privacy-invading uses for this technology.

Boon to Ellison & Co.

[Zen Mastuh]

This facial recognition has a near-zero Hit rate and a high false-positive (Type III error???) rate. The false-positive rate is a killer because it may cause system operators to miss a Hit (true positive). So what do we end up with: an authoritarian tool that is completely worthless.

Meanwhile, the failure of this project can be a selling point for Larry Ellison's proposed National ID card system. Perhaps the streetlamp cameras in Ybor City will soon be replaced by turnstiles manned by undereducated, undermotivated, understimulated, minimum-wage-earning Security Engineers (read: displaced airport security screeners) checking each person's National ID card. These people probably won't be able to grasp the concept of Type II/III errors; thus the implementation of the National ID Card will suffer from the same problems as the facial recognition system.

In summary the two vendors will profit substantially from their products--which won't make the public any safer--and we will be eased into acceptance of the mercantilist authoritarian police state.

Wanna see something funny?

[Moorlock]

Check out this article from the Christian Science Monitor - at the top is a photo captioned "Pelco CEO David McDonald walks through the X-ray checkpoint at Fresno Yosemite International Airport with a picture of Osama bin Laden to demonstrate a new face identification system."

For more on McDonald's over-hyping of the emperor's new security blanket, see this article from the Fresno Bee .

Sample quote: "This breakthrough technology makes us the safest airport in America," Mayor Alan Autry said.

Dramatic changes

[Deanasc]

I've shaved my head and put on 40 pounds since my drivers liscence photo was taken 8 months ago. Sometimes I wear contact lenses, sometimes glasses so thick my eyes look like dots. If I wear a turtleneck jersey my head looks like a lump on my sholders. If I wear a tshirt I look like a turtle stretching it's neck.

How will this software be able to truly establish it's me if my photo in the database is 40 pounds lighter and with contact lenses if I walk around with my glasses on now.

I also wear false teeth so I can change my jawline at will.

Come and get me!

Camera worked for me!

[zulux]

I put a visible non-working video camera pointed at the street and our local crack-house, and their business collapsed. The house in question was rented by a slum-lord to the lowest bidder and the drug traffic was driving me nuts. I made a good show of the camera and suddenly, the 'customers' were a bit leery. The druggies soon moved out and were replaced by a rather nice poor family.

I was set to get the camera working, but the it's presence was enough. Highly recomended. PS: I removed the camera once it became obvious that the new tenants were cool.

the one question they didn't ask, however

[supernova87a]

I read the ACLU pdf file, and found their conclusions interesting, particularly regarding the high number of false positives, and that the system was taken out of use basically because they were discouraged how few matches they were getting.

But the one question that wasn't asked or answered in this piece is very important -- did the crime rate in that area drop during that period? Because if it did, the face recognition system may actually be working, and not seeing criminals may be a GOOD thing!

If the system actually deters crime, and criminals know about the system being in place, it wouldn't be unexpected that criminals would choose to actively avoid that area, leading to a lower detection rate! Did they consider that?

Re:ACLU is fighting the wrong fight.

[SirStanley]

It won't store the image longer than needed to identify it. It goes bye bye. IT can store the images if it really wanted too. But all those facees would take up lots of space. And they won't do that. Its one of those "Mis-use" Clauses.

Slashdotters are weird in that they have double standards. If Strong-Crypto can be misused by criminals thats ok because there is a legit reason for the existence of such a technology. If this camera system were misused by the government thats bad. Even though there is a legit reason for the technology. And in the event it was misused by storing your picture permanently (WHICH IT DOES NOT) then there would be a very very large public outcry and it would be political suicide to support such implementations.

Leftists always mean well but the cold hard facts of reality and the real world have yet to be realized by them.

A Little Reminder On Stats

[robbway]

Back In late September I read and/or heard about these face recognition devices. According to statistics, the results were exactly correct.

Assume a 90% accuracy with a database of 10 criminals. If there are 100,000 samples, 10% will be false positives. That's 10,000 alarms that mean nothing. Of the remaining 90,000 people, you'll get 9 true alarms (assume they walk by!) and 1 gets away. Therefore you have to fend off about a thousand errors to get a real suspect. At that point, human error could easily step in and assume it's another false alarm.

This is the same objective reason racial profiling is wrong. You spend all your time and resources harrassing innocent people.

Of course, a cheap solution to this problem is multiple camera angles.

Iron fists with velvet gloves

[Secret Coward]

An article at MIT describes the issues of surviellance societies.

Some other negative aspects of the new surveillance can be briefly mentioned:

IT IS CATEGORICAL in nature, involving "fishing expeditions" and "searches" absent any evidence of specific wrongdoing, thus violating the spirit of the Fourth Amendment. The presumption of innocence can be undermined-shifting the burden of proof from the state to the accused. There is also a danger of presumption of guilt (or an unwarranted innocence) by association or statistical artifact. And, because of the technical nature of the surveillance and its distancing aspects, the accused may (at least initially) be unable to face the accuser. The legal basis of some of the new surveillance's crime-prevention actions is also questionable.

THE SYSTEM'S FOCUS on prevention entails the risk of wasting resources on preventing things that would not have occurred in any case, or, as sometimes occurs in undercover activities, of creating violations through self-fulfilling affects.

POWERFUL NEW DISCOVERY mechanisms may overload the system. Authorities may discover far more violations than they can act upon. There is a certain wisdom to the ignorance of the three monkeys. Having information on an overabundance of violations can lead to the misuse of prosecutorial discretion or demoralization on the part of control agents. Charges of favoritism and corruption may appear as only some offenses can be acted upon.

IN ORWELL'S AND OTHER science fiction accounts, control is both highly repressive and efficient. There is perfect control over information (whether the ability to discover infractions with certainty or to manage beliefs). As the examples cited suggest, the new surveillance has great repressive potential (in actuality or via myth). But it is invariable less than perfectly effective and certain, and it is subject to manipulation and error. 21

ALTHOUGH DETERRING OR DISCOVERING some offenders, the routinization of surveillance, ironically, may grant an almost guaranteed means for successful violations and theft to those who gain knowledge of the system and take action to neutralize and exploit it. This suggests that, over time, many of these systems will disproportionately net the marginal, amateur, occasional, or opportunistic violator rather than the master criminal. The systematization of surveillance may grant the latter a kind of license to steal, even while headlines hail the effectiveness of the new techniques.

Face Rec @ 100% no false positives.

[jeff13]

Viisage technology is NOT the best on the market. However, one cannot check the results of testing online at the International Biometric Group website. Guess they don't think it's important for the whole world to know what algorithm gives the best results in independent testing. If your curious, The winner was the Canadian Company AcSys Biometrics Face Recognition Systems.

Face Recognition is the least intrusive of the Big Brother security technologies. Especially when you take into consideration that scanning a crowd for a certain face will not work . Let's be real here kids, some companies are simply lying about what thier programs can do.

Re:ACLU is fighting the wrong fight.

[arkanes]

Yeah, go ahead and keep thinking that the pictures just go away. And believe the FBI when they promise that they NEVER read the content part of the emails carnivore sniffs. I think you are grossly optimistic about what would cause a very very large public outcry (example: well documented evidence of ongoing wiretap abuse by the LAPD. No public outcry at all).
We should hold public servants to a (much) higher moral standard than we hold private individuals, and there should be signifigant oversight. I also don't agree that there IS a legitimate use for widescale monitoring of innocent, private people - one of the (theoretical) keystones of our legal system is that people are innocent until they are PROVED guilty, and that it's better to let 100 guilty people go than convict 1 innocent person. The modern corporate/government culture of assuming people will be criminals unless you stop them cuts at the foundations of our society.