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3D Biometric Facial Recognition Comes To UK
Roland Piquepaille writes "In the UK, where the recent Queen's speech about national identity cards generated lots of -- mostly negative -- coverage, another potentially invasive technology is being tested with very few criticism. For example, several police departments are now testing a 3D biometric facial recognition software from Aurora, a company based near Northampton. The use of facial recognition 'is rapidly becoming the third forensic science alongside fingerprints and DNA,' according to a police officer who talked to BBC News for 'How your face could open doors.'" (More below.)
"The company claims its software is so sophisticated it can make the distinction between identical twins. And if the civil liberties groups continue to be neutral, this technology could also be deployed in airports or by private companies. Even banks are thinking to put cameras in their ATM machines to identify you. The good thing is that you will not have to remember your PIN. On the other hand, as with every new technology, is it safe for your privacy and is it possible to hack the system? Read more before making your decision."
If this technology is as good as Aurora claims, it can be used to implement a virtual ID card - just scan someone's face, and you can bring up their info from a database, no need for them to carry a piece of plastic around.
Obviously that's a privacy concern - but how can you regulate face recognition? It's fundamentally no different from having a live cop recognize your mug.
My friend was building a 3D scanner for his final year project. He went to Aurora for a tour and to see how they did it.
:o (this was around the beginning of 2000, I'm not a big Geri fan so I can't tell you what video it was)
According to him they said that they'd taken Geri Halliwell's face and put it on to the body of a model for one of her videos as she was pregnant at the time.
I wasn't sure if I believed what Aurora had said at the time, and I'm still not. But if its true, this technology must be pretty advanced as that was 4 years ago.
The problem with face recognition is that faces change. If you get a black eye from some fist fight, the computer won't recognize you. Children going through puberty can look completely different in a matter of months. What if you're wearing huge-ass sunglasses? What if you grow a beard? Will you not be able to ID yourself if you are wearing an eye-bandage?
--- MS: "Working software is soooo nineties!"
if you're pretty enough...
Because with all those biometric recognition system/ATM, all a junky robber would need off would be to cut my finger/eye/head whatever and try to match it against the ATM. With pin code they at least need you alive to tell them what the pin is.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm a bit concerned about the claims and assumtions regarding the "foolproof" nature of this technology.
Aurora say that they have a zero failure rate, but this is not proof on the "uniqueness" of their identification.
New technology like this very quickly becomes "magic" to the general public and the end users, and there is indeed a difference in the computer recognising your face vs a live cop... the computer is more likely to be assumed to be infallible
My first thought was, 'where should I paint the stripes on my face to confuse such a system?'. My next thought was 'actually, painting stripes on my face might cause worse problems, such as being called 'stripey' by small kids'.
All the same, it would be pretty cool if measures to avoid face recognition became a mark of toughness ('I'm a scary criminal, me, I have to avoid cameras') and then of fashion -- everything that's adopted by genuinely scary people winds up being worn by college kids 5-10 years later, after all. The result could be an interesting arms race between software designers and makeup artists.
Now I'm off to order my David Blunkett latex mask. Heh heh.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Seriously, are the cameras going to be set to raise an alert when someone walks down the street that they can't distinguish? Will police occasionally stop you and ask you to remove your stetson so that CCTV can calm down?
How reliable can this be? And if they can scan and recognize a face this effectively in the data, can we reproduce it in latex a la Mission Impossible... well enough to fool the system anyway?
And do we want the government to have this much data on people?
I can certainly answer the last question.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
3D Biometric Facial Recognition Comes To UK
In the UK, where the recent Queen's speech about national identity cards generated lots of -- mostly negative -- coverage, another potentially invasive technology is being tested with very few criticism. For example, several police departments are now testing a 3D biometric facial recognition software from Aurora, a company based near Northampton. The use of facial recognition "is rapidly becoming the third forensic science alongside fingerprints and DNA," according to a police officer who talked to BBC News for "How your face could open doors." The company claims its software is so sophisticated it can make the distinction between identical twins. And if the civil liberties groups continue to be neutral, this technology could also be deployed in airports or by private companies. Even banks are thinking to put cameras in their ATM machines to identify you. The good thing is that you will not have to remember your PIN. On the other hand, as with every new technology, is it safe for your privacy and is it possible to hack the system? Read more...
Here is the introduction from BBC News Magazine.
The ethical debate about identity cards has been reignited following the Queen's Speech, but its facial recognition technology is being used in other areas. Police are hailing it as a forensic breakthrough and a new "foolproof" 3D version could eventually become a routine procedure at cash machines or workplaces.
Once the preserve of science fiction, biometric facial recognition has now become a reality. Despite its association with the controversy of identity cards, it is predicted to become part of everyday life.
But is the technology ready?
As companies become more security conscious, the process of having our faces scanned is set to become more commonplace. And new technology which can produce this in a more accurate 3D form could accelerate this trend
A firm which has developed the 3D software, Aurora, claims it is sophisticated enough to distinguish between identical twins.
The brave BBC reporter tested the software for us.
I underwent the procedure myself and it only took a few seconds. A camera used a near-infrared light to put a virtual mesh on my face 16 times. It merged these into one unique template and calculated all the measurements of my features.
3D facial recognition software from Aurora Here is a computer screenshot showing you how thousands of points map your face and produce detailed measurements of what you look like
[image]
Now, the real questions are to know if the technology gives accurate results and if it's possible to hack the system.
The government's biometric trials for passports and identity cards have reportedly experienced a 10% error rate in face recognition. The Home Office denies this and says that in any case its trials were only testing the procedures and the public response, not the technology.
Aurora claims its software eliminates these alleged errors. Founder Hugh Carr-Archer says: "We can't say it's 100% but we've done tests and have a zero failure rate.
According to the police, the 3D technology is still too expensive to be widely deployed, but it continues to use successfully 2D images.
It works by scanning an image of a suspect's face - such as a CCTV picture taken from a crime scene or a drawing based on eye-witness accounts. This produces a 2D map of the face which marks attributes such as the distance between the eyes.
Then the computer uses an algorithm to compare the data of this face to thousands of others on a database of offenders - people who have ever been arrested or charged. Within seconds it lists the matches in order of relevance, just like a web search engine.
Of course, this technology is not approved by the justice and can't be used in courts. But it's used by the police
It is geneally agreed that the latest Queen's speech (which is a speech made by the Queen using a script given to her by the incumbent government of the day) was a feeble affair which did little to reassure an already pissed off public.
The current Labout government run by T. Blair is generally seen to be scaremonegering over things like terrorism and crime to justify a new raft of draconian measures. Each one of these measures has been a cynical attempt to limit liberty within the UK. There has already been a government funded surevey judgning the "peoples" attitude towards ID cards which, according to the government, showed an overwhelming support for the scheme. Until, of course, it was discovered that the survey was far from impartial and the sample group was so small as to be non-representative.
Technology aside I fear for my children's liberty, they are already unable to do the stuff I used to do as a child - like blow things up with home made gunpowder, whittle wood with a knife (yes knives are soon to be banned in this moronic country) and when they get older they won't be able to smoke a cigarette (yep, smoking is banned too).
No, don't be lured by the technology, this is a bad thing. I hope my American cousin's don't let the president push them into accepting a loss of liberty in the name of some ficticious threat. It looks like this country is starting to fall foul of the lie that is "The war on terror"
I've recently lost about 5Kgs of weight, and my face, particularly the shape, is quite different. I look at pictures of myself just 3 months old and even I look quite different. Even friends who see me every day comment on it.
This technology could be flawed by people just gaining and losing weight. Look at pictures of people who have lost a lot of weight and you'll see their cheeks, chin, even lips all look completely different. If this system is so "accurate" it can distinguish between identical twins, what happens when people eat too many twinkies or lose a few kgs?
'How your face could open doors.'
Yo momma's so ugly that doors open whenever they see her.
Have you metaroderated recently?
The reason we Brits aren't getting excited about this advert for a software company is very simple. It will need to get government backing. That means it will drown in red tape long before it hits the streets. The IT record of the UK government is a long list of what not to do.
the "distinquish identical twins" is hype and irrelevant.
As with all such systems it doesn't recognise faces but a metric derived from the face. It's entirely possible that two or more different faces can have the same metric (within the limits of the measuring process.)
So what do you do if someone matches your metric and is a terrorist? Unless you solve the false positive problem, and in a population of a billion people there are always going to be many false positives, you haven't solved face recognition.
This is not a theoretical problem. Already people have been falsely imprisoned because their DNA matches some found at a crime scene.
This quest for perfect identification is a waste of time and money.
UK police departments have been using 3D biometric facial recognition since the day they first opened their doors. All they're doing now is supplementing expensive trained officers with cheaper new tools.
Seriously, if you people are technophobes on this level, you should log off right now and sell your computer. You can probably use the money to buy enough wood to build a shack in the mountains somewhere.
Oh, wait, you'd never survive that way; you're probably a hoplophobe, too.
Seemed to work impressively until three people showed up at the door, one spied into the iris reader, door opened and the other two just tailgated through.
Non-UK readers should be aware that David Blunkett, the UK Foreign Minister and parent of this god-forsaken legislation often uses the old "you can trust us with your data - it's not like we're the Nazis or anything" line when people complain about ID cards, biometrics and all the other good stuff he has in mind.
Non-UK readers shuld also be aware that Blunkett this week is facing charges of inappropriate behaviour when he was caught personally intervening in the visa application for his mistress' new nanny.
I find myself needing to give my face/fingerprints to a man who would appear to be a corrupt adulterer. How excellent is that.
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.