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Face-Recognition Software Fingers Suspects
eldavojohn writes, "In Holyoke and Northampton, Massachusetts, the police have a new member on the team. It's facial recognition software that will mine the 9.5 million state license images of Massachusetts residents. From the article: 'Police Chief Anthony R. Scott said yesterday he will take advantage of the state's offer to tap into a computer system that can identify suspects through the Registry of Motor Vehicle's Facial Recognition System.' The kicker is that this system been in use since May and has been successful." An article from Iowa a few weeks back mentions that software from the same company (Digimark) is in use to catch potential fraud in applying for driver's licenses in Alabama, Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Texas. But offering the software and photo database as a resource to police departments raises the stakes considerably. I wonder what the false positive rate is.
$ finger suspect
finger: suspect: no such user.
$ finger suspects
finger: suspects: no such user.
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
Face-Recognition Software Fingers Suspects
And what does it do if they're male?
Latewire
Yeah, but futhermore wouldn't it be safe to say that they don't just go indict someone with charges without a gumshoe comparing the photographs themselves? I mean, theres go to be some sort of human involvement. Lets say the have a CCTV image of a buglary suspect and they use this software to scan the DMV photos for a match, and the software returns 1 or more matches. They don't just throw the match(es) in jail right then. I think its a safe bet that law enforcement would use their own peepers to compare the DMV photographs with the CCTV to see if its close, and then go about questioning the match(es) for their whereabouts..etc..looking for other evidence before going ahead with prosecution. It's obvious that this system is meant to give leads rather than 100% solve cases. Sure there are going to be false positives, it's a computer look for matches. It's more than likely that it's designed to be liberal with its matches simply to give detectives a list of a dozen possible suspects rather than the entire population of a city/town etc. Regardless, I can't say I'm entirely surprised that a slashdot editor took this chance to stir the pot on something that for the most part is cool, useful, and manages to assist law enforcement without trampling our privacy.
mmm...muffins
I fear "automatic" matching of criminals and trying to catch them, e.g., when they renew their license. Here is a true false-positive story that happened to me. I went to renew my driver's license, and the nice lady informed me that she could not issue me a license because I had had mine revoked in Maryland due to felony charges. Now, I have never committed a felony and I have never been to Maryland, let alone had a driver's license there. The nice lady was unpersuaded by this information. The database said I was a felon in Maryland, and that was the end of the story.
After much yelling about the problem, it was finally revealed that the real felon's name was exactly like mine except for one letter, and some moron doing data entry had gone ahead and decided we were the same person, based solely on name. Since this data problem was local to the "matching" system they had implemented, and not prevalent in who-knows-how-many databases, it was cleared up with a little investigation. However, if that "match" had been replicated into other systems, I could very well have had a nasty time clearing my name. The lady at the DMV was 100% convinced that I was a felon based on what the computer told her. Quite likely, no one else would have believed I was innocent either.
I can see this system playing havoc with people too. I have met people with no connection to each other but who nevertheless look virtually identical.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
The issue is more than just the false positive rate. The problem is that they are going through the entire DMV records. As it stands right now, most places can only go through previously arrested people for things like fingerprint and facial matches, which is something that comes with having a record. I, as a law abiding citizen on the other hand, should not be immediately thrown under suspicion just because my face is somewhat similar to a blurry CCTV image, which is what the false positive rate could cause. I have a job that requires me to be in a certain place at a certain time, thats not exactly possible if I am being held for questioning because of something someone I have never met did something on the other side of town. If I could trust our government to use new technologies judiciously and with restraint, it wouldn't be a problem, but this hasn't ever been the case and, short of some utopia suddenly appearing, probably never will.
Clones are people two.
Finally! Inept police departments will be able to solve murders and other heinous crimes using awesome computer graphics in 47 minutes or less...just like on TV!
Enhance...enhance...enhance...
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
I had one criminal conviction when I was 18. It has dogged me my entire life. It is so upsetting to hear people say, oh well, as long as it's only *convicted criminals* who go into these insane database searches.
It's wrong to mass-search drivers' license pictures. It's also wrong to mass-search pictures of anyone who has ever been convicted of a crime. Many, many people have a regrettable misdeed in their past. It's wrong to continue to punish people who have, as was once said, "paid their debt to society."
Penitent and paranoid in California.
How does it handle identical twins?