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In Istanbul, Cameras To Recognize 15,000 Faces/sec.
An anonymous reader writes "Istanbul's popular (and crowded) Istiklal shopping, cafe, and restaurant street is being outfitted with 64 wirelessly controlled, tamper-proof face-recognition cameras attached to a computer system capable of scanning 15,000 faces per second in a moving crowd for a positive match. The link from Samanyolu, badly translated by Google, states that 3 cameras are in place so far and that if trials are successful, this will mark the first time such a system, previously used by Scotland Yard and normally reserved for indoor security use, will be put to use in a public outdoor setting. It also notes that each camera controlled by the system is capable of 'locking onto' the faces of known criminals and pickpockets detected in the crowd and 'tracking' their movements for up to 300 meters before the next, closer placed camera takes over." Hit the link for more of this reader's background on the growing electronic encroachment on privacy in this city, which will be the European Capital of Culture in 2010, causing him to ask, "Is the historic city of Istanbul turning into the new London?"
While the article doesn't state it outright, it would appear likely that the outdoor face recognition system, if "successful," will be expanded to other crowded areas of Istanbul as well, which has already seen a dazzling increase in the number of installed plain-vanilla (non face-recognizing) CCTV cameras in recent years. This comes after Istanbul's two signature Bosphorus bridges have become passable only by vehicles with a mandatory vehicle windscreen-mounted electronic pass, subway and bus tickets in the city have gone electronic, vote tallying in municipal and national elections has become fully computerized, and future plans for mandatory biometric ID cards for all Turkish citizens have been announced by the government.
The ruling "moderate Islamist" AKP party appears to frame these and other e-government initiatives as "keeping step with the times," "keeping step with other major world cities," and "making living safer, easier and more efficient through the targeted use of electronic technology." Its secular critics, on the other hand, argue that everything and everyone under the sun is rapidly becoming electronically trackable thanks to the omnipresence of mobile phones and gratuitous overuse of these installed electronic systems, and that these systems will, eventually, form a dense surveillance grid that could turn daily life for Turks (and secular Turks critical of the current government in particular) into living in a veritable Big Brother House.
While the article doesn't state it outright, it would appear likely that the outdoor face recognition system, if "successful," will be expanded to other crowded areas of Istanbul as well, which has already seen a dazzling increase in the number of installed plain-vanilla (non face-recognizing) CCTV cameras in recent years. This comes after Istanbul's two signature Bosphorus bridges have become passable only by vehicles with a mandatory vehicle windscreen-mounted electronic pass, subway and bus tickets in the city have gone electronic, vote tallying in municipal and national elections has become fully computerized, and future plans for mandatory biometric ID cards for all Turkish citizens have been announced by the government.
The ruling "moderate Islamist" AKP party appears to frame these and other e-government initiatives as "keeping step with the times," "keeping step with other major world cities," and "making living safer, easier and more efficient through the targeted use of electronic technology." Its secular critics, on the other hand, argue that everything and everyone under the sun is rapidly becoming electronically trackable thanks to the omnipresence of mobile phones and gratuitous overuse of these installed electronic systems, and that these systems will, eventually, form a dense surveillance grid that could turn daily life for Turks (and secular Turks critical of the current government in particular) into living in a veritable Big Brother House.
In Istanbul but not Constantinople?
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So I'm guessing that setting up a stand selling fake mustaches, Guy Fawkes masks, and Groucho Marx glasses on a busy corner in Consta... er.. Istanbul would get me a lot of money and a lot of police attention quickly.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Nah, that's no one's business but the Turks.
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First Constantinople, then this. And I still want to know- why did Constantinople get the works?
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
More importantly does it work on a moonlit night?
In Istanbul but not Constantinople?
Been a long time gone, Constantinople - now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night.
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Anyone else think this is overkill? I can't pull 15,000 faces a second. Hell I don't think I know how to pull more than about 50 faces. Maybe 100 with variations. I can pull maybe 2 a second. Does this technology recognise middle fingers too?
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Like the armenian genocide?
It's nobody's business but the Turks'.
I dunno about that. if you have a date in Constantinople, you'll be instantaneously, electronically identified in Istanbul.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Sorry, but that's an oxymoron. It may be tamper-resistant (and some wireless devices have pretty good tamper resistance), but nothing that can be controlled wirelessly is tamper proof.
I think the day they invent a wireless camera that is tamper resistant to a can of spray paint is quite impressive, too.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Byzantium. Byzantine is an adjective.
*sigh* regardless, you can't fly like an eagle if you're hanging around in Turkey.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Perhaps if the high res camera's stream uncompressed data ... but MPEG4/H264 camera streams have already thrown away significant amounts of "fine detail" data. So the system will probably report 1000 sightings a second of Saddam Hussein, 2000 sightings a second of Osama Bin Laden, 20 an hour of Mickey Mouse, 100 an hour of Barbara Eden ...
Hubble uses spectroscopy to do that. I don't think you can use that method to pick one person out of a crowd.
Why not?
All you'd have to do is heat the crowd until they're glowing so as to give off enough light to analyze.
Or is that a problem?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If you are going to go that far just build a big gas chromatograph. Run an electric current through them and measure how far their molecules move.
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Fake moustaches? Having seen a few Turkish TV shows, I'd say they have no need of those.