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

Re:ok...

[bourne]

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:

• There's no evidence that the face-matching algorithm is the problem. It is for false positives, but the lack of true positives is just as likely to be a lack of... positives.
• If so, it isn't the facial recgnition that needs work - it's the facial database! We'll have to start requiring facial shots for all incoming student visa holders.
• Heck, make that all visa holders.
• Frankly, everybody belongs in the database but me and thee... and I'm not so sure about thee.

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?

Hmmm... I don't see the problem here

[DG]

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

Re:Hmmm... I don't see the problem here

[DG]

Well, there's a major difference between this technology and a lie detector.

Humans are not very good at detecting lies, and can in fact get very good at certain, specialized forms of deception, even in the face of equally speciallized deception-detectors. (I'm thinking here of professional poker players, who make their living on deceiving and detecting deception, in a very specialized manner)

So a lie detector is an attempt to augment an ability.

But humans are VERY good at facial recognition, much better than any machine is. The limitation here that the machine is trying to address is one of storage capacity (memory) and speed, not ability per sae.

I make the assumption here that the interface would display the picture of the person that it thinks the person in question matches alongside the picture from its camera (or print one for the officer to carry with him for an in-person comparison) so that the vastly superior human facial recognition abilities could be brought into play.

So, really, I don't see any reason to get upset. It's no different than if an officer saw your photo on a "wanted" poster in the post office, and then made the match from memory, only now the "memory" is much larger.

When an arrest warrent is cut, your driver's licence is flagged in the DMV computers. If you get pulled over (for any reason) and your licence is checked against this database, they get you. How is this any different?

DG

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.