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Tampa Police Give Up On Face Recognition Cameras
Saint Aardvark writes "The city of Tampa has given up on their face-recognition system attached to street surveillance cameras."
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The Register has a story here.
Interestingly enough, they mention successful system in Scotland being up to 70% successful in "crowd".
This news site dosen't seem to be up to the slashdot effect. Heres the text.
Tampa police eliminate facial-recognition system
By MITCH STACY
Associated Press
AP Photo
A surveillance camera is seen in the Ybor City area of Tampa, Fla., in this June 2001, file photo.
TAMPA, Fla. -- Civil-rights advocates celebrated a decision by Tampa police to scrap a highly touted facial-recognition software system that was designed to scan the city's entertainment district for wanted criminals.
But after two years, it yielded no positive identifications and no arrests.
"It was of no benefit to us, and it served no real purpose," Capt. Bob Guidara said Wednesday, emphasizing the decision to drop the software was based on its ineffectiveness rather than privacy issues.
Tampa became the first city in the United States to install the software in June 2001 to scan faces in Ybor City nightlife district and check them against a database of more than 24,000 felons, sexual predators and runaway children.
But critics said it violated privacy rights, forcing Ybor City visitors to be in what amounted to an electronic police lineup without their consent.
Darlene Williams, chairwoman of the Tampa area chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she's glad it's gone.
"People have the right to be anonymous, and not to be put in a police lineup for committing the offense of walking down a public street," Williams said.
"As a culture we have always given police the tools that are deemed appropriate to do their jobs. (But) this was handled without public input or foreknowledge, and that was wrong."
New Jersey-based Visionics Corp. had offered the city a free trial use of a the program, called FaceIt. It was installed on closed-circuit cameras that police used to monitor Ybor City crowds on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
A police officer in a room three blocks away monitored video images and could pick out faces in the crowd to scan and run through a criminal database to search for matches.
Initially, it could be used only with one of the system's 36 cameras at a time, but an upgrade last year allowed use on up to six of the cameras.
Critics compared it to George Orwell's novel "Animal farm" and Texas Rep. Dick Armey, the U.S. House majority leader at the time, called for congressional hearings on the technology. Protesters donned bandanas, masks and Groucho glasses on one busy Saturday night to show their contempt.
Police are at a loss to explain why the software wasn't effective, since it seemed to work fine in controlled testing, Guidara said.
Meir Kahtan, a spokesman for the company, now known Identix Inc. after a merger between Visionics and the security technology company Identix, declined to answer questions on the matter Wednesday.
The company's only comment came in a one-sentence statement that seems to suggest privacy issues were behind the Tampa's decision.
"Identix has always stated that this technology requires safeguards, and that as a society we need to be comfortable with its use."
Guidara said the closed-circuit cameras installed in 1997 will remain in Ybor City without the face-scanning capabilities. They are effective as a deterrent and have helped police foil crimes, he said.
Face-scanning technology is still being used in other cities. The airport, jail and jail visitation areas in Pinellas County are using it, but it has never resulted in an arrest, officials said.
Virginia Beach, Va., installed the software on closed-circuit cameras along the city's boardwalk last summer. While it has never produced a hit or an arrest, police spokesman Sgt. Max Hayden said it performed well in controlled tests and may be a deterrent to criminals. Signs along the boardwalk inform visitors of its use.
"It would not be prudent to take technology offline when it's been up and running for a year, based on another city deciding not to use it," Hayden said.
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
At an ATM it can/could work very well, when you're walking down the street, in motion with your head at various angls, no wonder it doesn't work. As far as PC's go thumb would probably be more likely
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
"I'd love to have some sort of laser pointer that I can point at cameras in public areas to break them"
Why not use a regular laser pointer? I believe the link below was featured on SlashDot once (or was it www.cryptome.org?).
http://www.naimark.net/projects/zap/howto.html
"Or not. It didn't work. No duh. Did anyone really think it would?"
Sure. It DOES work, if set up properly. What, you think it's not possible in theory? Why?
Thats because your mind stores such information holographically. You have two eyes set 1-3/4 inches or so apart. That gives you 3D image that is stored in your visual cortex AS a 3D image. The eyes of the observee are a major aspect of facial recognition. 2D cameras dont record the subtleties of eye color and iris detail.
You dont recognize people that you have never seen before. If you were to see a photograph in 2D of some random individual, then try to find that person in a flowing crowd under varying light conditions and facial expressions, you probably wouldn't be able to recognize that individual. It takes several months to teach a person to do this. Even expert law enforcement personnell cannot do this without a certain ingrained talent for recognizing faces.
Stupid Humans.....
Not even the fact that it doesnt work is really interesting; the fact that face recognition technology used in this way is, and always will be, worthless was known already.
Face recognition is useful when comparing small groups against a large database, or a large group against a small database since you can trim the fuzzy factors to get more false positives or more false negatives. For example, if you want to find the identity of a certain suspect in a large database you can have it spit out 10 suggestions of who it could be and eliminate the false positives manually. Or if you use it for access control you can trim it to reject as much as possible, as someone going through an access control can adjust their face for optimal lighting and try again.
But to use it to scan random people under bad conditions and compare against a large database where you dont want either false positives or false negatives is idiocy and the system will be completely useless as you'll either get dozens of random false positives each day and haul in innocent people who probably look nothing like the match or you wont get the actual matches at all.
The companies like former Visionics trying to push these systems for crowd use are selling snake oil. It doesnt work today and as the factors making it unusable cant really be significantly improved upon it wont work in the future either.
This reminds me of a DUI checkpoint I saw a couple of months ago. They had not one, but TWO signs 6 and 4 blocks, respectively, that said, "DUI checkpoint ahead". There were plenty of opportunities to turn down another street and avoid it altogether.
I actually saw a pretty intelligent use of signs by cops once. lollapalooza was held in an outdoor venue near where I used to live. People leaving the show had to get on a limited-access highway and go about 2 miles before there was an exit, and everyone leaving the show had to drive to that exit. About a mile before the exit, they placed several large signs that said 'Drug checkpoint ahead. All cars will be searched.'
Of course, that would be illegal to do, and there was no 'drug checkpoint' at all. Instead, the police waited around for people to illegally u-turn across the median and then busted those people. We just kept driving, and sure enough, no checkpoint. After we made a legal u-turn at the next exit, we saw someone swerve across the median, and then saw two cops streak after them, sirens blazing. I don't think we stopped laughing the whole way home. Sure, it's an underhanded method, but anyone who knows their rights wouldn't fall for it.
http://xkcd.com/386/
If you ignore the privacy worries for a minute...
You have no right to privacy on a public street or in a public place.
In Tampa they had a full time officer using the system who could have been out on the streets
in the community that he is trying to protect understanding and interacting with that community.
While the software is a failure, having a single full time officer watching the cameras is a good way to 'patrol' a larger area. Examine the case of having six cameras that scan six widely separated areas in a downtown neighborhood. It would take six full time officers to monitor the area as thoroughly as that one officer and six cameras could. This frees up five officers for use as a response team or to walk beats in areas that are not amenable to camera surveillance.
I dislike the use of "officer" to describe the person monitoring the cameras. Why does the individual have to be a certified law officer? A "dispatcher" would be a better description. They would dispatch the "highly trained" certified law officers in the patrol area to the site of the problems.
My WAG from around twenty-five years of observation is: 90% of wanted criminals at large the police do arrest are discovered in random encounters like traffic stops or from someone that knows the criminal tipping off the law.
You also have a misconception. The police in the United State are under no obligation to protect you. They are there to deter crime and enforce laws. If you are in the process of being assaulted and call 911, you cannot hold the police responsible failing to protect you when they show up 20 minutes to an hour after the perpetrator has fled the scene leaving you in a pool of your own blood. The courts have repeatedly held this to be true. Regardless of what the TV tries to tell you and what some departments paint of the side of their patrol cars, the police have no legal duty to protect you. They only have a duty to enforce the laws by issuance of citations or arrest of criminals. Even their powers of arrest are limited by the risk to by standers. Police cannot arrest a criminal if the attempt to apprehend would pose a danger to the public at large.
The Osprey's errors were simply well reported. Nearly every new plane design has to go through the same mess - new planes are dangerous. When you get a pilot's license for anything but basic flight, you are type-certified and do training either in a simulator or with a pre-certified pilot who knows the plane. New plane == no experienced people; especially something like the Osprey that was such a major change on typical designs. None of this means that the plane didn't work and didn't have many succesful flights. The problem was you could only really train on it by hack-jobbing your flight.
SIG: HUP
The Osprey's shortcomings were over-publicized for the most part. Many new aircraft have significant problems, especially one so radically different as the Osprey. The fact that some officers decided to try and cover up the problems didn't help public perception, but that's just what it was - perception, not fact.
The Marine Corps needs a new medium-lift helo. The CH-46 Sea Knight is entirely too old. Have you ever ridden in one? I have, and believe me when I tell you that we don't call them "Flying Coffins" because we thought the name sounded pretty.
The Osprey isn't perfect, but it's an example of a system that can be great if given the chance.
Although your point is Valid, the Osprey (V-22) is a bad example. The V-22 is actually a very well put together aircraft and has been performing very well. All the test piolets seem to love flying it and all of them have told me that the plane transitions from hover to flight seamlessly. The vehicle flies about twice as fast as a conventional rotoary aircraft and can lift a fair amount more cargo. The USMC is slated to purchase quit a few to replace the aging (30-40 year old) CH46 fleet, and it is sorely needed.
As far as it being forced on the military, thats a line of crap. The Marines (to write about what I know) are very much excited about getting their grubbies on the plane, however as usual with transitions there are a few old horses who feel that the CH46 is fine. 'it's not broke so don't fix it'.
The crashes you refer to numbered 3. And they all occured early in the V-22's test cycle. Although not official, some opinions are that the crash was caused by piolets trying to hotshot a little too much in the planes.
And face recognition doesn't have much to do with the 3rd dimension even for "normal" people. Try looking at the back of a mask that imitates the facial contours on both sides. If you hold it at the correct angle, your brain will flip it inside out and you'll think you're looking at the front of it. Face recognition is a special case of visual recognition for your brain.
I suspect the reason it's difficult to recognize people you don't know in a crowd has more to do with the mass of data you have to take it to know the faces of a lot of criminals. That probably combines with the low resolution on those cameras to increase the difficulty of the problem for humans. You probably would have very little difficulty picking out someone you know better.
Of course, it doesn't work...
The CCD needs to be of high-resolution (greater than 15 megapixels) alongside with zooming lens and a 24/7 staff of camera operators in order to garner sufficient pixel details necessary for adequate facial resolution.
Don't forget, the best evasion technique against this cutup is a simple New Orlean masquerade mask.
Oh yes, want night-time survelliance and target-elimination? Don't forget a infrared laser with remote-control software-adjustable variable beam-width lenses.
Come on... Slapping a 2 megapixel and a fixed lens together isn't going to cut it.
According to this story
During [Aurora, CO's] annual bluegrass festival in 2000, officers posted signs saying "Narcotics checkpoint, one mile ahead" and "Narcotics canine ahead". They then hid on a hill, clad in camouflage, and watched for any people who turned around or appeared to toss drugs out of their windows after seeing the signs.
Stephen Corbin Roth, 60, was pulled over for littering after he threw out what appeared to be a marijuana pipe. Police found a marijuana pipe and mushrooms during a search of his car and he appealed his conviction on possession of drug paraphernalia to the appeals court.
Under the procedure that day, an officer down the road would be told by radio to pull over any vehicle seen littering while an officer on the hill would run down and find the items thrown away.
The appeals court ruled drug checkpoints are illegal because motorists are stopped at random and without reasonable suspicion of committing a crime. However, in Roth's case, the court concluded that finding the marijuana pipe gave the officers probable cause to stop Roth's vehicle.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The problem with the Tampa system, or an airport system or any other public environment is that they are all transient in nature. An airport has millions of people going through every year, with a pretty good chunk in a hurry to catch a flight. Many of these people will never pass through that given airport again. You also have a much larger database of positives to pick from. The Tampa system had 30,000 mugshots to base from. There were simply too many out of control variables for the system to be effective. In essence you are looking at a system that doesn't deal well with transient environments. Now let's compare this to casinos where the technology was developed and you'll soon see the flaws with the Tampa system.
The casinos in Vegas have an official "black book" list of only 38 people they are required to keep out, Atlantic City has 173. In addition to this most casinos partake in a mutual database of people that they know or suspect are cheats. From these sources you have a listing of some 3000 - 5000 cheats (source being techs from Vegas I worked with for a while, can't find link to verify) that they want to look out for. They also have something more important. They have an environment where people enter and tend to stay for a few hours. They also have a lot of high quality video cameras from many angles, and have a fixed viewing area. Translation, they don't have nearly as many people to look for, can view a relatively stationary target from multiple angles, and have a lot more time to compare a picked out face to a database, and no security needs that an airport would have that dictate immeadiate detention.
The reasons this works in casinos almost all stack against this working in a public environment like a city center or an airport. The question is, how long until technology improves before such systems would be considered to have an acceptable false positive rate? Standards are also needed for compensation for people who are falsely picked up and miss flights, hotels and the like. A missed airplane flight can be thousands of dollars, what is the appropriate compensation to the poor detained soul that is not in fact a terrorist or criminal?
Lifted from an ad for a POLICE / FIRE COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST
THE POSITION
Under supervision, receives and dispatches emergency and routine calls for police and fire service; operates a variety of communications equipment including public safety radio, telephones and recorders; determines nature, priority and disposition of calls using a computer aided dispatch (CAD) system; maintains radio communications and status of police and fire field units; and does other work as required.
The Combined Communications Center is a 24-hour facility located at the Police Department. Incumbents must be available to work weekends, holidays, call back, standby, and rotating shifts. The current shifts are: Day Shift 6:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Evening Shift 4:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.; and Night Shift 9:00 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. Shifts are rotated every 12 weeks (from day shift, to evening shift, to night shift); there are no exceptions to shift work.
EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS
Ability to: Follow oral and written instructions; learn police and fire radio operations and procedures, local streets, police beats, fire districts, the classifications of crimes and recognition of common police and fire codes in order to obtain information from the public, initiate a response, and accurately record information; remember instructions and information; clearly and tactfully communicate factual information to citizens; question callers while simultaneously typing information into a computer terminal.
Skill in: Operating a computer terminal; listening and speaking clearly and responding quickly and accurately to emergency and routine requests for assistance.
Desirable Qualifications: Spanish-speaking skills; experience/training as an emergency communications operator, dispatcher or similar position requiring knowledge of emergency medical or public safety operations; coursework in criminal justice or communications; prior computer-aided dispatch (CAD) experience.
Typing Certification of 30 net w.p.m. is required. You must submit a copy of a typing certificate of 30 net w.p.m. (gross words-per-minute minus errors) with your application. The typing certificate must have been obtained within the last twelve months. The City does not give typing tests.
EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS
High school graduate or equivalent (myemphasis)
Lifted from an ad for a UNIVERSITY POLICE OFFICER TRAINEE
REQUIRMENTS
University Police Officers meet the highest police standards in New York State.
To become a University Officer, a person must:
be 21 years of age
be a New York State Resident
have completed 60 college credit hours(my emphasis)
possess a valid New York State drivers license
pass a written Civil Service examination
pass a medical examination
have binocular acuity of 20/20 corrected or uncorrected, and no less than 20/100 uncorrected
pass a physical agility test (includes testing for cardiovascular and muscular endurance, strength, and flexibility)
pass a psychological examination
pass an extensive background investigation
pass 16 weeks of basic training administered by SUNY at the New York State Police Academy in Albany.
complete a probationary period of employment.
Median Police Salary $ 36964
Median Dispatcher Salary $24299
I remember 20 years ago the father of a friend of mine claimed he had hardware/software that could identify faces. It was all over the TV and newspapers. Nothing's changed.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
it didn't work in Pinellas County
Actually, this isn't true; I attended a presentation given by the Pinellas County Sherrif's dept. and they're thrilled with their system and don't know how they'd get by without it.
The reason it does work for them is because of the way they're using it. Face recognition systems are lousy at identifying people against a large database, but they're very good at locating a small subset of the database that may be a match. And people are quite good at looking at a small number of photos and matching against someone standing in front of them. It also works well for them because they use it under very controlled conditions (consistent camera angles, lighting, properly positioned subject, etc.).
The Pinellas County jail designed a system that exploits the strengths and minimizes the weaknesses of both human and automated face recognition. When someone is booked into the jail, their photo is taken and compared against a database of prior visitors, and then the 50 or so closest matches are presented on a screen for the officer to decide if any of them match. This is valuable because criminals often lie about their identity, and it's very helpful to both the jails and the court system to determine their true identity as quickly as possible.
Soon after the system was put in place, it was common for criminals to offer an alias, only to have the receiving officer tell them their real name. Now, the deputy said, they've mostly learned not to bother with an alias at all.
Pinellas County also uses the system to scan visitors to see if any of them are wanted on outstanding warrants (and if they're in the system, of course). The major effect there has been a significant decrease of criminal visitors. ISTR that the deputies said they had in fact arrested a few visitors, but the article says there have been no arrests. I'm not sure which is true.
Face recognition does work, when applied correctly and in the right environment, so don't just write it off as irrelevant to privacy concerns.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Just ran across this law issue the other day on cnn.com:
Article