Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Counterstrike, Identification, Patenxtortion
False negatives, false positives, anda false sense of assurance. coryboehne writes: "TechNews has a report on the face recognition system installed at the Palm Beach Internation Airport early results of face-recognition surveillance suggest the technology is proving once again to be unreliable.
The ACLU said the first four weeks of testing at the Palm Beach airport showed the technology was "less accurate than a coin toss." The system matched the faces of the volunteers just 455 out of 958 times, or about 47 percent of the time.
Seems to me that this is a controlled environment for the most part, and still they have problems this big? I wonder if this technology will ever be accurate enough to work properly. I suppose the biggest problem is the size of the database that would be necessary to hold the high quality pictures necessary for accurate identification.
However I must admit that I am rather glad that this is'nt working yet as I'm not too sure I even like the idea of being able to digitally locate and track anyone within range of a camera."
This is what's meant by "repeat offender." Audent writes: "Following on from this story on Slashdot about PanIP's nasty habits, InfoWorld is running a story about it all.
To quote from the story about PanIP's boss:
'These lawsuits aren't the first time that PanIP principal Lawrence Lockwood has initiated legal proceedings against companies he felt were infringing his patents. Lockwood filed a lawsuit against American Airlines in 1994, claiming that American's SABREvision airline reservation system infringed on other patents he holds. Lockwood lost the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California and then lost again on appeal in 1997.'He's since had a bunch of patents disallowed. He's obviously learned from his earlier 'mistake' and is only going for the smaller companies.
Kick his ass I say. Disclaimer: I work for IDG Comms in New Zealand)."
Temporary sanity. CyberQ writes: "Some news from Germany on the censorship front: Despite demands from prominent politicians the responsible Federal Authority decided today not to ban the sale of Counterstrike to minors [Link in German, use the fish]. This came after weeks of public discussion following a school shooting by a student who apparently trained by playing CS."
From the poster: Seems to me that this is a controlled environment for the most part, and still they have problems this big? I wonder if this technology will ever be accurate enough to work properly.
A similar story on Wired indicates higher match rates (90%) at airports in Dallas Boston. The maker of the recognition system speculates that lighting was a factor in the Palm Beach for the low match rate. 90% still a bad rate (better than 99.9% or something like that would be ideal), but it shows how differences of environment can affect these things.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Suppose 1 out of 10000 people in the US are terrorists. This strikes me as an absurdly high ratio, but let's assume for the sake of argument that it is this high. This system claims to scan 10000 faces in one day. At that rate, it will catch one airport terrorist and nine innocent people per day.
See something wrong here? I do.
If we assume a more realistic ratio of 1 terrorist per 100000 people, then you end up catching 99 innocent people and 1 terrorist every 10 days. At this point the utility of the system looks very questionable indeed. And this is without even considering the ease of importing new terrorists that aren't in the system yet.
I'm not that big a fan of face recognition technology in general, but airport terrorism is just about one of the absolute poorest possible applications of the idea.
Your "prestigious private university" apparently didn't facilitate you acquisition of any critical reading skills. You will not find in Nietzsche any doctrine of racial superiority. The fact that the Nazis used his work to try to justify their ideas does not mean that his work contained the seeds of their ideas, but rather that his aphorisms, taken out of context, could be used by them as "sound bites". For example, "the will to power" is a central concept of Nietzsche's thought. But it is complex. (Nietzsche invented the concept of sublimation - check your Freud, he gives credit.) But the PHRASE "the will to power" is simple, and can make a powerless and frustrated group very excited. That's about the level of Nietzsche you can find in Nazism. If you will trouble yourself to read Nietzsche, you will find a brilliant psychological philosopher with a firm grasp of history, a true free-thinker, and a man who found German nationalism quite repulsive, and said so.