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."

Comments

Doesn't work

[JohnGrahamCumming]

If you ignore the privacy worries for a minute the most interesting thing
in this story is that the system didn't work. It didn't work in Tampa,
it didn't work in Pinellas County and it isn't working in Virgina Beach.

So you've got a dud system that's wasting police time. 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. If you talk to police officers, reporters, or social
workers I think you'd find that they value highly local knowledge in doing
their jobs, not all seeing all knowing eyes in the sky.

John.

Re:Doesn't work

[Azghoul]

And that's about all that has to be said about the project, though we'll get plenty of people complaining about the privacy concerns.

What's more interesting to me than the fact that it doesn't work is that the guys interviewed (policemen, IIRC) didn't know WHY it didn't work.

And they didn't waste entirely too much money, the company gave it up for a free trial. I wouldn't want to be working for that company any more though. :)

Re:Doesn't work

[0123456]

"I wouldn't want to be working for that company any more though. :)"

Why? Just because it doesn't work, that doesn't mean they can't get the government to mandate its installation in all public places to catch "terrorists". That's the great thing about government contracts: it's not whether it works, it's who you know with their face in the pork trough...

Re:Doesn't work

[0123456]

"Well, that's particularly cynical."

No, it's realistic. Just look at something like the Osprey, which the US military didn't want, which doesn't really work, and which has killed quite a few people in crashes, but Congress kept forcing funding onto the military for because it kept the pork going to their mates.

If they know the right people they will get the contracts whether or not it works: there's a huge amount of pork available for "anti-terror" projects at the moment, so they merely need to grease the right palms to get their share. Not working is irrelevant when politicos are involved.

Re:Doesn't work

[Znork]

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.

Re:Doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Doesn't work

[esper]

that's about all that has to be said about the project, though we'll get plenty of people complaining about the privacy concerns.

As well we should, for two reasons:

1. The cameras are still in place (and, I believe, in operation). I prefer not to be on camera without my consent, even if there isn't a computer trying to match my face against a criminal database.
   
   
2. If the only reason they retired it was because it doesn't work, then they're likely to try it again once the technology has gotten a bit better. It's not dead for good.
   

Does this mean

[Lawrence_Bird]

that they have lost face?

Re:Does this mean

[TheViffer]

Did they every have one?

If they were the same quality cameras they use in say convenience stores or banks how could they work in the first place.

You know what I mean, black and white, fuzzy, jerky motion of peoples its shooting. I am sure we all have seen them on the 10 o'clock news with the news person say "Have you seen this man/women".

They are so bad that a few months ago a truck rolled into a local convenience store for a smash and grab. The cameras were not even able to make out the license plate at this one particular location.

One would think with all of today technologies, massive digital storage space and low prices for this hardware a decent system could be put in.

Yes but...

[CGP314]

But after two years, it yielded no positive identifications

I'm sorry, I didn't catch that... how many false positives did you say the system had?

Not surprising

[Wierd Willy]

These systems will never work untill they can figure out a way to store such information as faces and other physical attributes holographically. 2D photography won't ever do it accurately enough to make the system functional.

Re:Not surprising

[tiled_rainbows]

That doesn't make sense. I can recognise a particular face from a 2D photograph. Therefore it must be possible, just difficult.

Re:Not surprising

[Wierd Willy]

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.

A UK Solution...

[The Brain Murderer]

Here, whenever a criminal appears on the TV, their face is always partially obscured whereas everyone else looks normal.

Why not site these cameras at ports and airports as any dodgy people would appear with their faces obscured so you could just arrest them...

Another Story on the Subject in The Reg.

[markom]

The Register has a story here.

Interestingly enough, they mention successful system in Scotland being up to 70% successful in "crowd".

Re:Another Story on the Subject in The Reg.

[markom]

Spend an afternoon in London if you don't believe me that Scots have `substance dependance` issues.

Uhm, I hate to bring it to you, but London is not in Scotland...

I want cameras in New Orleans

[beacher]

Cameras on every corner. Web based cameras. Pan and zooming cameras... With some recognition software.. We could build something that dispenses beads when it recognizes ... umm...

Shocking....

[moehoward]

Or not. It didn't work. No duh. Did anyone really think it would? I always got the idea of the guy selling these was like the monorail salesman in the Simpsons.

I'm completely amazed that the general public has become conditioned to tolerate this crap from law enforcement. Yes, it's nice that it's gone now, but we all know it will be back. And furthermore, the cameras themselves are still there!!! I mean, come on!! We should be outraged enough that the cameras are there, let alone the facial recognition.

Is civil disobedience dead or has civil disobedience become outlawed? What sort of legal/semi-legal countermeasures can be taken against surveillence cameras set up in public places? I'd love to have some sort of laser pointer that I can point at cameras in public areas to break them.

'the closed-circuit cameras will remain'

[Chip Salzenberg]

... with more effective pattern matching software watching it: human cops. I think that's a better deterrent to crime than the flaky software they've given up on.

It broke man.

[secondsun]

Police are at a loss to explain why the software wasn't effective, since it seemed to work fine in controlled testing, Guidara said.

If I were selling you a million dollar system it would work when I showed it off too.

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is awesome ... finally I can visit Tampa again!

Re:disappointing

[curtisk]

Actually it can work fairly well in controlled enviornments/parameters

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

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[Pompatus]

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.

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.

Does it really take that much intelligence for a criminal to avoid an area where he/she might get caught? While one might be so drunk as to not be able to read the signs, I think law inforcement in these circumstances is being as stupid as these criminals. Maybe it's that think like your enemy strategy.

Re:Advertisments

[untaken_name]

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.

Re:What's wrong with CCTV?

[GigsVT]

Rather than have dozens of police officers wandering about the streets more-or-less aimlessly, a smaller number can be directed to trouble spots very quickly.

The logical extension is cameras in homes. Get robbed? No problem, the police have all your video on file, and can just pull up the footage to see who broke into your home.

Or maybe there are pesky political demonstrators marching down the street, interrupting traffic. With the cameras in place, it will be easy to convict them for something to shut them up for a while.

It's not as much what their doing now, it's that the same arguments for what they are doing now can be used to justify real loss of freedom.

NPR: 1) No tax dollars; 2) No (?) false positives

[dpbsmith]

According to a radio report on NPR, Tampa did not spend money directly on the system. The surveillance cameras were already in place (and will remain in place) and Identix provided the software on some kind of free-trial or beta basis. Of course, I'm sure a great deal of police time = money was wasted on training, etc.

The reporter discussed the issue of false positives with the interviewee, in a somewhat vague way. The reporter said, sensibly enough, something like "Isn't the problem that if you require too many measurements to match you don't get identifications, and that if you only require a few you get false positives?" The interviewee concurred. I got the impression that the police department might have insisted that the system be tuned to a level where they were not wasting time on false positives, and at that level there were simply no matches.

The reporter also asked (also sensibly) whether the apparent lack of success could have been because the system's installation was widely publicized and the bad guys knew better than to show up in Ybor City. Interestingly enough, the interviewee said something like "If I believed that, it would be a great thing and I'd want to keep the system in place forever." I was, however, left with the distinct impression that the interviewee did NOT believe that.

Common problem with recognition systems.

[AlecC]

This system seems to have tripped across a common problem with all id recognition systems - face, retina, voice, fingerprint, whatever. That is that they are used in two completely different modes.

One mode is the verification mode: this person claims to be Mr XYZ: is he? For this purpose, you only have one identity to match. If the answer comes out "maybe" instead of "yes" or "no", you can take another photo/scan/whatever. You can use extremely number intensive checking techniques because you are only trying to match ONE face/eye/... to ONE record. And the people being checked have at least some incentive to help their system (remove glasses, get a rescan when they have hair cut or grow beard). Systems can be made to do this very reliably in this mode - call it mode 1.

You can scale this up a little bit, while maintaining reliability. A car, for example, might recognise the voices of four registered drivers and adjust itself to suit, or a secure area form a few tens of people. Call this mode 1A.

The second mode is when you are trying to detect any one of a large list of possible people in a huge crowd, when they may have changed their characteristics significantly, either intentionalyy or unintentionally. Call this mode 2.

The trouble is that a lot of people assume that, if you can scale from 1 to 1A, the scaling from 1A to 2 will be linear. Which it won't. As well as the linear scaling of vastly more records to match (a linear scaleing), there is the the no-rescan, chjanged face, uncooperative facto, which acts quadratically with the fist. This means the problem explodes uncontrollably very soon.

Some of the people making this assumption should know better.

Don't know what you're talking about, do you?

[kikta]

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.

Facial recognition is merely in its infancy

[kenyob]

Not necessarily true. Visionics failed miserably as we all know and fell flat on their faces. However new technologies are being developed that greatly enhance facial recognition technologies such as 2d to 3d facial modelling Cyberextruder, wireless mobile, light compensating camera systems JonesCAM.tv, and high speed database systems. Facial recognition and other biometric technologies are merely in their infancy. Biometrics is at the point where the world wide web was in 1994. Its truly about to explode and privacy issues will come up. But I feel in this day and age with all the acts of terrorisim people will give up a little bit of privacy to feel safer. You will also see the greatest use of the technologies in casinos first and foremost. They have money and a ton less privacy issues.