Face Recognition On Mobile Phones

gpvillamil writes: "This article describes a collaboration between Motorola, Visionics and Wirehound to build in an automatic mug shot recognition capability into mobile phones. Particularly interesting is how the phones will scan all faces in the field of view, and indicate matches by an instant short message."

Comments

Arrested based on crappy facial recognition.

[Marty200]

I can just see it. Walking down the street and some cops cell phone mistakes me for a murderer and then next thing I know I'm in jail. The odds are that the software is going to make a mistake, and how do you convince the police that it's not you.
MG

How'd this get approved?

[Anonymous Coward]

Facial recognition doesn't even work with human computers, much less what will fit inside a commodity cell phone. I hope Motorola's stockholders are aware of this & make sure they don't throw more good money after bad.

how accurate can this stuff be?

[Xzzy]

Just to illustrate the problems with this stuff (beyond the well known superbowl incident), browse through this moderatley-related link: flo control

Seems like a pretty cool set up, right? Not quite.. start flipping through the timeline archives this guy has saved up (the "flo watch" button). As you click through, note how many times it seems like the cat would be permitted to enter, yet it comes up not letting him through the door. this day was a particularily bad day for the system. We, as humans, would have positively identified the cat properly. Computers, obviously, can't do that yet with any high accuracy.

Now granted "law enforcement" versions are going to be a wee bit more sophisticated, but if the cell phone version has even half the errors this cat detector does, are we ever gonna be able to put any faith into this technology?

Re:Biometrics

[hey!]

They'd better secure the transmission and storage of this data, because one excellent application for this would be to steal biometrics. The bad guys can then impersonate who they will be either hacking their cell phones to send your biometric, or by even simpler means.

As an example, the current generation system being deployed in airports can be fooled by a picture which is xeroxed and worn like a mask. I read an account of a demonstration of the technology at an airport where the company's rep put on such an improvised mask with Osama Bin-Laden's face on it -- triggering the alarm of course. My reaction to that was -- this is supposed to make me feel safe?