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.

Comments

Re:Oh really?

[neovoxx]

In Istanbul but not Constantinople?

afaik

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ...

Say what again?

[laughingcoyote]

...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.

I am familiar with the software in question and...

[Assmasher]

...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.

Re:I could see google integrating into this...

[value_added]

...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.

the competent authorities will be transferred to safety in the system

Somebody set us up the bomb.

the street that 15 thousand people in the face of a second degree in the search by scanning the person is detected and the system of the images with image is brought to the screen.

Main screen turn on.

That the people at the top to lock the camera by a third during the 300 meters, is to follow.

You have no chance to survive make your time.

To all corners of the country should not be.

For great justice.

Sunnah says:

[mapkinase]

Hadith - Sahih Bukhari 9:38.2, Narrated Sahl bin Sa'd As-Sa'idi

A man peeped through a hole in the door of Allah's Apostle's house and at that time, Allah's Apostle had a Midri (an iron comb or bar) with which he was rubbing his head. So when Allah's Apostle saw him, he said (to him), "If I had been sure that you were looking at me (through the door), I would have poked your eye with this (sharp iron bar)." Allah's Apostle added, "The asking for permission to enter has been enjoined so that one may not look unlawfully (at what there is in the house without the permission of its people)."

Hadith - Mishkat, Narrated AbuDharr Tirmidhi transmitted it, saying this is a gharib (weak chain of narration) tradition

Allah's Messenger said, "If anyone removes a curtain and looks into a house before receiving permission and sees anything in these which should not be seen, he has committed an offence which it is not lawful for him to commit. If a man confronted him when he looked in and put out his eye, I should not blame him. But if a man passes a door which has no curtain and is not shut and looks in, he has committed no sin, for the sin pertains only to the people inside."

Though those stories clearly refer to invading the privacy of one house, scholars universally extend to any prying.