Lip-Reading Surveillance Cameras

mrogers sends us to Infowars for the following news from the UK, "which is fast becoming the front line of the war on privacy": "'Read my lips..."' used to be a figurative saying. Now the British government is considering taking it literally by adding lip reading technology to some of the four million or so surveillance cameras in order identify terrorists and criminals by watching what everyone says. Perhaps the lip-reading cameras and the shouting cameras will find something to talk about."

Comments

This will all work fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Until someone invents stealth technology to circumvent it. Like covering your mouth with your hand.

Re:This will all work fine

[badboy_tw2002]

Ah, but then you have something to hide. And they know it and will soon be picking you up to have a chat about it. After all, if you weren't doing anything wrong, why would you care if your Big Brother knew about it? He just wants to make sure you're living a comfortable and safe existence!

Re:This will all work fine

[olego]

You know, I used to think that everyone who said that was being sarcastic and was merely making fun of the government... Until I watched a couple of press releases by the government and realised that these things are actually said.

And that really freaked me out.

obvious

[eclectro]

When the lip reading cameras come online, they will see that everyone is repeating this sequence of numbers;

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Countermeasure

[jbeaupre]

You could easily defeat the system by wearing a burqa or other type of veil. Then you'll never be mistaken for a terrorist. Right?

Re:Countermeasure

[sexybomber]

You could easily defeat the system by wearing a burqa or other type of veil.

Or a Guy Fawkes mask, if you were so inclined. It's more stylish, at least.

Now time for that popular new hit

[geekoid]

"Fuck you, I'm a terrorist." This single is rising fast on the charts and is on everybodies lips.

Better Solution

[Billosaur]

Train yourself to talk like out-of-synch karate movies...

Re:Solution

[Shakrai]

There is also the low tech option and just go inside to talk where they're aren't any cameras....

A good low tech option in my mind would be to vote the dumbasses out of power that think this is a good idea.

The bad thing is

[Cro Magnon]

it won't work against politicians, because they talk out of their asses, not their mouth.

Free Speech

[quantaman]

I could see something like this having a very chilling effect of free speech.

Think if you've ever complained about the police when talking when a friend, now think if you'd still complaining as loudly if a police officer was within earshot.

This doesn't even have to work, a lot of people walking down the street are still going to feel nervous saying bad things about Big Brother if they feel Big Brother is actually listening.

Re:Solution

[arivanov]

And it will still not recognise them.

Germans found that out in world war 2 and used it. Apparently, no matter how good you get in a language you use different lip technique from the native speakers. As a result a professional lip reader (or a deaf person trained to lip read) will pick you out right away.

Back on the British topic. Just looking at the 7/7 and 21/7 bombers you have more than 4 different ethnic origins - Somali, Jamaican, Ethiopian and various different tribes originally from Pakistan. Each of these will be using a non-standard lip technique. While it may be possible to get some relatively low reading rate by a professional who has unlimited time to look at the tape, a real-time automated system will fail miserably right away. The only ones it will pick out will be Caucasian whites of English origin (I suspect it will fail on Scots and Welsh) who for some unbeknown to us reason have decided to discuss 7/7 instead of Chelsea vs Arsenal (that will probably be 1-2 people in the whole country anyway).

It's a scam

[DeafScribe]

If the UK goes forward with this scheme, they're getting scammed. I know, from research and real-world experience with people with intensive speech-reading training, that lipreading will yield, at most, about 25% of speech. There are simply too many words that look alike or resist analysis to grasp more than that. You can fill in some of the blanks by the situational context, body language and residual hearing, if there is any. But frankly I see this as an effort to take advantage of gullible government agencies by touting a gee-whiz technological solution that won't work.

Re:It's a scam

[techno-vampire]

I've some hearing loss, and recently took a series of classes on coping with it. Part of it was experimenting with lip reading. Not only do many words look similar, letters formed mostly with the tongue look identical. Look in the mirror, sometime, and say the letters t, c, g and z, and try to tell which one is which. You can't. Now, imagine security droids looking at what the computer thinks somebody is saying and taking it as the literal truth because, as we all know, computers never lie. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Re:Written constitution and bill of rights.

[psykocrime]

The Constitution ( and the Magna Carta, and the Articles of Confederation, etc., etc.) is just a piece of paper. It can't do anything to defend our rights... we have to do that ourselves. Once the government has made the decision to step outside of
the bounds set for it (by said Constitution) the only choice is for "We The People" to put it back in those bounds, or destroy it.

Revolution Calling? Yeah, you could say that... But we haven't reached a critical mass yet, where enough people *care* about what's happening to do anything about it.

Infowar == kookery

[Bogtha]

Please, why are you linking to kooks like Infowar? Here is the original article, which they conveniently don't link to. Compare and contrast. Infowar:

Imagine a place where if you say something considered by the authorities to be suspicious a team of agents is dispatched to your location to detain and question you.

Of course, the lip reading technology isn't even in existence yet, let alone any kind of government plan to use it or secret police squad. From the original article:

Richard Harvey, a senior lecturer in computer vision at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, is embarking on a three-year project that will collect lip-reading data.

It's just hype to promote a new research project. Infowar seeks out anything that can possibly be used for bad purposes, and spins it out of all recognition. It's a site run by a paranoid kook, not a legitimate news source.