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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.
But can there be 15000 people in it's view within each second?
signature is pants
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?
CCTV ... ... ...
- less effective than promised
- doesn't reduce serious crimes like assault
- doesn't reduce, but shift crime scenes to other areas
- less effective than more light, more policemen,
- more expensive than more light, more policemen,
- often not working, tech staff admits
Nah, that's no one's business but the Turks.
0x68ADA2CC
...64 wirelessly controlled, tamper-proof face-recognition cameras...
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. Especially not when even the entity that has legitimate access (presumably the Turkish government) is entirely trustworthy to begin with.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
It's inevitable that face-recognition technology, combined with the myriad of other technologies that already allow individuals to be tracked in their daily lives, will become pervasive enough to provide a "dense surveillance grid" to anybody with access to a big enough dataset. The era of anonymous living is quickly coming to an end. We'd be better off devising technological counter-measures than trying to hold back this tide with laws.
Sometimes technologies inevitably, if deployed, will be abused. Some technologies are too powerful to be in anybody's hands. Power corrupts, and all that.
Any time you see 'X'-proof in a description, you know they're bullshitting you. There's never been a lock made that couldn't be picked or bypassed in some way.
The real question is whether it's worth the hassle - hasn't London's experiences shown that CCTV cameras either get broken or people just move into the blind spot to do something they don't want seen?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
First Constantinople, then this. And I still want to know- why did Constantinople get the works?
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
...the phrase 15,000 faces per second is just an example of sensationalistic journalism.
There is a minimum input size for the identification of a 'face' dependent upon aspect and the focal length of the camera in question (amongst many other factors such as radial distortion due to the lens, whether the lens is shielded, lighting, et cetera); ergo, the camera in question, at a given focal length, could contain a field of view large enough and the resolution is high enough to meet 15,000 x the absolute mimimal pixel input for a 'face.' The processing for systems of this type (although I don't recall if it applies to this particular system) is tileable and accounts for boundary conditions (a 'face' falls on up to 4 tiles); therefore, the processing is highly parallel in nature. Most likely they meant that with the maximum cameras in place, given their proposed resolutions and fields of view, if they had unlimited computing power they'd theoretically be able to process 15,000 faces each second.
Solving a computer vision problem like this turns out to be highly hierarchical; i.e. a large number of computers process the incoming camera frames for optical flow, multigaussian motion detecxtion, edge detection, --insert motion map generating algorithm here--, these motion maps are shuttled to a second tier of systems who perform basic pattern recognition in order to discern probable aspect, reference points, and other forms of meta data. This tier can, if given a profile, apply discriminatory filters to sort the wehat from the 'chaff.' These 'probables' are then passed to the highest tier of systems who process this (hopefully) much smaller number of 'faces' using things such as color-space normalization from the original image, the motion map, and all the associated method data that has been generated along the way.
Luckily, most of the large companies working in these sorts of field are capable of producing crude prototypes; but, oddly enough, quality software engineers tend to be scarce amongst security companies. It is the startups and smaller companies (such as those found in Israel) that approach these types of problems with the flexibility to lead to some seriously scary big brother stuff.
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...to add to their massive data mining efforts. I can't even imagine the possibilities.
If they do, I hope for our sake it turns out better than their translations.
Somebody set us up the bomb.
Main screen turn on.
You have no chance to survive make your time.
For great justice.
Just normal sunglasses would do the trick nicely, not to mention traditional Muslim head wear.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Actually, this is exactly what "Big Brother" is all about... just one of the many rungs in the ladder.
Which is officially illegal in the Turkey.
You know... They reformed...
At least before the fundamentalist retards got strong again.
Compare this to your own history. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Though those stories clearly refer to invading the privacy of one house, scholars universally extend to any prying.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night
Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way
So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks
Istanbul (Istanbul)
Istanbul (Istanbul)
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks
So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks
Istanbul
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
0.6% seems like a good ballpark figure for false positives.This research paper claims 0.6%. This article says "Commercial facial recognition technology ... had a 1 percent false positive rate."
15000 faces/sec * 0.6% false positives = 90 false positives per second.
How many cops does it take to ask 90 people per second to come to the police station to answer a few questions? How many busses does it take to take 90 people per second to the police station?
Once they get there, if it takes five minutes to look at each suspect's papers, run them through the computer, and clear them, that police station waiting room will need to be big enough to hold 27,000 people.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
it will be intressting to see if it really leads to an 1984 big brother state, or will actually lead to superiour crime fighting.
The problem is, most real crimes are rare and occur mostly in uninhabited or lower-class areas. This isn't going to stop murders, rape, major theft, etc. all the while eroding privacy. The summary mentions pickpocketing, pickpocketing is hardly observable in a crowd of people, I doubt these cameras would be able to track down the crime itself. Then there is the problem of false matches. A lot of people look remarkably alike in facial structure but look different in other areas that may or may not be tracked by this camera. For example, skin, eye, hair, etc. can often be the difference between a false match or a correct one. Machines though either rely on this too much (hair can easily be changed making it useless) or not enough (two people looking totally different with side-by-side comparisons but may have same facial structure), then some things can change in different lighting environments, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Well, at least I know how to put proper quotes in my post, so people won't have to copy and paste the address in the browser.
I recommend you start some research in a field where you seem to be sorely lacking
As for the "venom at people" thing, sorry if I hurt your Turkish sensibilities, but all citizens of an empire must learn to cope with that, even if the empire hasn't existed for nearly a century.
The infrared option will allow it to see right through the beard and glasses. Not to mention the X ray option which will allow to scan through just about everything and match teeth to dental records.
If Hubble can detect what some million-light years away sun is made of, I'm pretty sure a face within a kilometre should be no problem.
Too bad prisons are so full already. Otherwise we could use such a system.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
paired together with computer-based/automated facial recognition, all this monitoring is going to make life really hard for dissidents eventually. at some point they're really going to be forced to live/hide out in the sewers, if they're going to remain in built-up areas.
considering Orwell was British (and the widespread deployment of CCTVs seems to have begun there), it makes sense that resistance to this pervasive monitoring began there, but even with these (generally fringe) groups, it's still happening. You've got to wonder if the reason the totalitarian regimes we've had crumble, is because the technology wasn't available yet. What happens when it IS available?
...and this is sensationalism, there is no good way to process 15,000 faces/second.
... and those algorithms tend to get confused easily (the one on our test bench, from a very large company that does a lot of government sales, tries to chase shadows from the ceiling fan, inevitably follows them to the corner and never sees anything useful again until someone manually overrides it).
Here's how it works in the real world:
1) Face recognition demos well with small data sets. When you set it up on a conference room and scan everyone's face in the meeting, and then have each subject re-approach the camera, it works great. Note that the each subject in this demo is in the same lighting and didn't grow a mustache in the last 5min -- and there were only ~10 people in the data set. The real world is very different. A 15,000 subject data set is very very different.
2) When you set up a camera to scan for faces you need a lot of pixels in a head-on portrait type of shot. 640x480 is actually still pretty high resolution for a camera (there are some 8 megapixel ones but they are rare and they generate so much data that it quickly gets hard to switch and store that much data, even locally). Still, you'll need most of those 640 pixels wide in order to get a good shot of a face -- esp. if you're going to run that face against a large data set.
3) So, if you had 15,000 640x480 cameras, they'd still have to be setup in front of 15,000 turnstiles, or some other kind of crowd control device, for you to know that you're going to get a good face shot AND people would have to be moving through those turnstiles at 1 person/second. Picking faces out of a crowd? Not going to happen. You'd at least need PTZ (Pan/Tilt/Zoom cameras) with face finding/tracking/grabbing algorithm to even try
The closest centralized face-tracking technology is from a company called 3VR, they are used by banks to spot known bad-check writers at the bank counter (when someone cashes a bad check, they will use a different name/account/ID but they still show up with the same face). It works okay, better than nothing at least, but they can tolerate a lot of false-positives and just slow pay them or ask for a 2nd form of ID or whatever.
The company I started, Connexed, centralizes video from a lot of cameras, but I can say definitively that there is no tool on the market that will process 15,000 faces per second, no matter how much money you throw at it, and do anything useful other than trigger a flood of false-positive ID's faster than humans can process. You could always try to set the algorithm for maximum false-negatives (let a lot of bad guys get by) and minimum false-positives but even then, unless you have some way to get 15,000 people/second to look directly into a camera under good lighting, you're not going to have anything useful happen.
I'm sure it demo'd well, though, and the vendor got a good chunk of money for the trial that will ultimately fail.
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
Neither sunglasses nor traditional head wear is illegal in Turkey. There is an embarrassing issue of ban on turban for students (when they are inside public schools or universities) and government officers (while they are working.) But one can wear anything they want on streets, in public places and also in majority of government offices. The military has an funny twist on the ban that wearing turbans (by civilians, inside military offices) is banned while traditional head wear is not.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
I doubt anyone is angry at technology. Not even at the people that invented it (let's be sensible here, being angry at something that has no conscience is kinda moot). A software that's able to recognize 15k people a second is kinda cool.
We are afraid of people abusing it, just like you say. We're afraid because we know people will abuse it. The question is not "if", the question is "when". And that when seems to be now already.
There simply is no way that this won't be abused. It's just way too tempting. Especially if you're a politician afraid of your subjects. Like, well, almost all people in power these days.
You might notice that the camera craze started shortly after the police riots in Paris. It wasn't even after the 9/11 attacks. Nobody threw cams around for "terrorist spotting" back then. Politicians are afraid of domestic riots by people who feel like they have nothing to lose and everything to gain because society cast them out. This kind of people started two quite successful revolutions in history (1789 and 1917, if I'm not mistaken), and, thinking about it, they were two of the few "successful" revolutions. Not in the long run, but it sure costed some powerful people head and life.
I can see why politicians and governments are afraid of their subjects.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If its a paradise as you say, why are you posting as an Anonymous Coward?
Let me quote from Economist a few facts:
Almost since it first came to power in 2002, Mr Erdogan's mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) Party has been under attack from Turkey's secular Ataturkist establishment, particularly the generals.
located in http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13446755
The generals and their allies believe that nothing less than the future of Ataturk's secular republic is at stake. Similar rumblings were heard when the now defunct pro-Islamic Welfare party first came to power in 1996. It was ejected a year later in a bloodless "velvet coup" and banned on similar charges to those now levelled at the AKP. But with each intervention the Islamists come back stronger.
Located at http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11745570
Pressed for evidence of creeping Islamisation under the AKP, they point to the growing number of women who wear the headscarf, which is proscribed as a symbol of Islamic militancy in state-run institutions and schools.
The battle for Turkey's soul is being waged most fiercely in the country's schools. Egitim-Sen, a leftist teachers' union, charges that Islam has been permeating textbooks under the AKP. Darwin's theory of evolution is being whittled away and creationism is seeping in. Islamist fraternities, or tarikat, continue to ensnare students by offering free accommodation. The quid pro quo is that they fast and pray, and girls cover their heads.
In other words, the threat of radical Islam in Turkey may have increased thanks to the secularists' attack on the AKP.
Located at http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11541234
Any more comments?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Fake moustaches? Having seen a few Turkish TV shows, I'd say they have no need of those.