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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.
all this means is the companies developing this stuff will have to improve their face-matching algorithm and then we'll all be back at square one.
It's worse than that:
How long until these companies start lobbying the gov't for mandatory inclusion of, say, license photos in the pool of database data so that people can be picked up as soon as they do something?
- The system has never correctly identified a single face in its database of suspects, let alone resulted in any arrests.
- The system made many false positives, including such errors as confusing what were to a human easily identifiable male and female images.
- The photographic database contains a broader selection of the population than just criminals wanted by the police, including such people as those who might have "valuable intelligence" for the police, or who have criminal records.
I wonder why they didn't mention that man who was a demo face for the system, and was subsequently misidentified then questioned as a felon. Guess it didn't make the logs.As I understood it, the issue with facial recognition was the possibility of false positives; ie, I'm just trying to watch the SuperBowl. the FR system tags me as a known terrorist (incorrectly :) and the next thing I know I'm being dragged off to the can for some serious interregation (and not only unjustly tramatized, but I miss the game too)
But from the ACLU's press release, there was always a human step in the process, where a real live human being would examine each purported match before anybody got dragged off anywhere.
As such, all the face recognition software is is a _filter_, cutting down on the number of people a human agent must examine. Where's the problem?
After all, law enforcement officers have placed themselves in public places, looking for people they knew, for probably as long as there have been law enforcement officers.
A friend of mine was a sergent in the British Army, and he did a few tours in Northern Ireland. Part of his training was memorizing the faces of a large number of known IRA "players" (and apparently the IRA did the same thing with British soldiers' faces)
How is this any different?
I guess I don't understand the ACLU's beef here.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
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.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
So I would say it is definately worth it to fight very hard against bad technology right from the start.
sPh
Your local convenience store can't detain you.
Well, technically they can. But the public, including that rent-a-cop in the convenience store, can only detain a person 1) if they witnessed a crime and 2) to turn them over to a sworn police officer at the earliest possible time. If either piece is missing, you can nail them for "false arrest." This is an important thing to remember if you're ever (wrongly) accused of shoplifting - demand a real cop, *now*, to either arrest you or release you. If they refuse to call the cops... life will soon get *very* interesting.
Even those bounty hunters have limited rights. They can detain someone who signed the bond papers, but there are some well-documented cases where the bounty hunters were prosecuted for kidnapping after detaining the wrong person and failing to exercise due diligence in verifying the identity of that person.
But sworn police officers can detain people even if the officer didn't witness a crime. They can detain people even if there's no witnesses at hand, e.g., if they reasonably believe that the person is the subject of an arrest warrant issued by another jurisdiction.
The cost of a false positive in a convenience store is minimal. They think you're a shoplifter because of their face recognition software? Fine, you walk away and shop at another store where they're more careful with their accusations.
But a false positive with a police officer may have you arrested, at gunpoint, and detained for hours or days until you can prove that you aren't the escaped mass murderer you resemble.
(IANAL, but this is stuff that should be required knowledge for a walking around on the street!)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Remember the good ol' days of th'Internet, where no one could possibly track you and where anonymity was technologically "guaranteed"
My point is, that arguing the TECHNICAL weaknesses of this, or any other privacy-infringing item/product/software/etc. will only result in TECHNICAL innovations that make it more effective.
We must argue the LEGAL weaknesses - the 4th amendment. We need to argue that no person waives their constitutional rights simply by the virtue of entering a commercial, travel, or other legal relationship with any other entity. (unfortunately, I fear we lost this one a long time ago)
We need to argue against clickwrap agreements, and their cousins:
Our legal rights are important. The details of whatever technology the FBI, CIA, or any other no - such - agency uses in an attempt to violate those rights, are less so.
Don't Frustrate their efforts. Fight them head - on!
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.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.