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Biometric Face Recognition At Your Local Mall
dippityfisch writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that face recognition is being considered at Westfield's Sydney mall to catch offenders. The identification system matches images captured by surveillance cameras to an existing database of faces. Police said they could not comment on the center's intentions, but would welcome any move to improve security and technology in the area."
One possible solution that I can think of, if you want to keep your privacy, is to wear a mask. Security should not have a problem with that, right?
Well its in the metro area. Bit like Dandenong here. That has a few scumbags too.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Police state, here we come.
I could see this actually being somewhat useful, though I admit I didn't read TFA. If you ignore the possible invasion of privacy which is kind of moot in such a public place, then if the algorithms to match faces work well enough, you could use it to identify criminals. I don't know if sex offenders are limited from being in malls with kid play areas, but if they are, that would be one good application I would stand for. Also if someone loses a child in a mall, this could make finding said child a lot easier.
.... to the Panopticon. Where everything you do, can and will be tracked.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I don't know about Australia, but malls in the US are private property. They can and will issue a no trespass order against anybody who causes them problems (shoplifters mostly).
If you don't want to be entered into their surveillance system don't shop at their mall.
It's their property they can do what they want with it. It's no different from me running facial recognition against people who walk up my stairs. (which i dont do btw..)
Really? Did someone pick it up and move it since the last time I was there?
Wow. I'm not familiar with "Sydney morning herald" so I'm not sure what I was expecting, but they certainly didn't meet it.
Half: "Police say this is great!"
Maybe a third: "Besides, it's already being used and you didn't even know it, so it can't be bad!"
And then: "Some academic loon has his panties in a twist over this"
Quickly followed by: "Another professor... of various more important things... says it should be used more though."
Australia often makes me feel better about the US. Right now, they're making me realize that as bad as Fox news is, it could get somewhat worse.
Wow, what a coincidence, I use to work/jointly-run a business in that shopping centre and crime wasn't that much of a problem to require measures such as this. Only thing I remember is an argument or so popping up around the movie theatres on the second floor every now and then or medical emergencies. Have to say it was a nicer place compared to other Malls.
Still, with the money they make from the leases (absolutely crazy expensive) I suppose this is just going to be a marketable attribute they can add to their brochures.
I've lived in Melbourne for half a century, in my experience the scumbags are usually found in Toorak. ;)
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Are we talkin' paparazzi photos here, then? I'm sure the celebs Down Under will really appreciate being outed in public like that when they're just tryin' to blend in!
Greetings and salutations...
Here is an interesting study that indicates that the chances of a false positive are fairly great, especially in a chaotic setting:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB396/DB396.pdf
One might wave this off as inconsequential, until one gets a security escort in the mall because their face happens to resemble that of a pedophile or thief.
Automating enforcement is a tricky thing, and, should be approached with great caution. We should not hop on the train simply because it is new, and shiny, and a sales person has taken us out for a multiple martini lunch!
Of course, this is a USA-centric view, where at least we have the historical documents that are SUPPOSED to protect the citizens against abuse of one's civil rights by the authorities... You folks out in the rest of the world...well....learn from the fact that over the past eight years or so, that, in spite of the Constitution, America has taken many large and troubling steps towards a Kafa-esque police state.
Pleasant dreams.
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Video Surveillance is Useless Presentation from prominent computer vision researcher, inventor of phase correlation method It basically saying, that on current tech level video surveillance is useless for face identification. What follow is that it's actually harmful, due to wrong impression of it's reliability.
One false positive can ruin your whole day, week, or life.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Why don't they just chip and track us all? That would solve a lot of crimes.
That's so 1998. Only poor people who can't afford Internet, and idiots who can't figure out how to buy stuff online are the ones there.
...but would welcome any move to improve security and technology in the area.
Then let’s just kill all life in the area and fill it with self-replicating evolving robots! That is a 100% sure shot to improve security and technology.
You said *any* move!
Don’t lie and act as if that was not exactly the direction you were thinking of.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Police should care about protecting citizens, or in case of a mall, customers, not welcoming deployment of as much privacy invading technology as possible in the name of "security". Technology doesn't equal security; it gives people the creeps, making them feel unsure and might very well result in them becoming more aggressive, not less. So, more technology is called for, because the cops can't be expected to actually get out in the street (mall) and engage in some old fashioned police work. Which is not, I appear to have to remind them, to kick or kill random people then claim "resisting arrest", or even to arrest people just so you can swab dna and then forget to file charges, or file some bogus charges only to drop them later.
Policing is very much a social job, even if it is that of a social janitor, putting a lid on people doing bad stuff to each other. Technology in itself is not a solution to people problems, and in many cases trying to deploy it like that is worse than the ailment. Mark these police guys and the mall management both down for a big fat FAIL.
...but it seems like it's the Brits and Aussies who actually end up taking it seriously.
The situation described in the summary is very different to you running facial recognition against people who walk up your stairs.
The shopping mall is a place where the public have been encouraged to go and spend their money. If it had been made clear right from the start that those entering the establishment would be logged and entered on a database, the business might not have got off the ground.
The announcement has been made only after the services available at the mall have grown to become a central part of many people's lives. The owner, whether they like it or not, has acquired increased responsibilities regarding the privacy and data retention issues.
What they do and how they do it is very much in the public domain.
What you photograph in the privacy of your own home is your business. Just don't let anyone catch you doing it in the mall.
In the UK at least nobody can arrest or detain you unless they have reasonable grounds to do so. The fact that their system sounds an alarm is unlikely to be sufficient grounds if that alarm often gives false positives (goes off when no offence has been committed). If they do detain you and you have not committed a crime you can sue and will probably win the case.
From time to time a security guard asks if they can look in my bag because an alarm has gone off at the exit. If they ask politely and make it clear that they are asking me to help them, I sometimes let them look. If they speak to me as though I must comply, I refuse and walk on. If they persist, I tell them to arrest me if they believe I have stolen anything but that I will sue them if they do.
I have always been allowed to leave and nobody has looked inside my bag without my agreement.
It saddens me to see apparently respectable people submit to the public humiliation of a search, in the apparent belief that the security staff have the right to require it.
The shopping mall security staff might be able to ask you to leave but they cannot arrest you for a breach of their arbitrary rules unless those rules are backed up by law.
Stand up for yourself.
I seem to remember a Judge Dredd story in which it became fashionable to be surgically altered to have exactly the same face as everyone else. Obviously this frustrated the ultra-fascist police force of the comics.
While cosmetic surgery isn't yet so causal a procedure in the real world as to make this a realistic scenario (although perhaps it isn't so very far away) I wonder what could be done with stage prosthetics and make-up.
If nothing else, the ultra-fascism is coming closer and closer to reality every day.
In the meantime, I'll just leave this here: http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2008/02/10/1202700672_7670/539w.jpg
I'm not a fan for these types of things in general, with the standard privacy concerns most people are listing. On the other side of it, my wife was a manager for several years at a retail chain at the mall, and they often had problems with shoplifting given the size of their products (bath and, you know, body products). They were required to try and maintain as little theft as possible of course, but they were given no support up the chain and were not allowed to confront/ask/suggest that someone was doing anything along those lines. And if they did, corporate would not support them and always support the customer because the store needs to be as customer friendly as possible of course.
Something like this could help with those problems where known shoplifters are meandering the mall. Store managers, as well as mall and store security personnel, already tend to share this information among themselves by stopping by each other's stores or calling over, but if you are the first store they visit it could be a heads up. Just playing Devil's Advocate a bit, even though I dislike the idea in general.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Face Recognition is one of those great sale pitches from the same guy that also tries to hack cloud computing to you. This post just tells me, there are still fools out there that fall for it.
-1 is for flame bait and trolls, not because you disagree with someone.
"The identification system matches images captured by surveillance cameras to an existing database of faces." ... and the whole thing is meant to fail.
The system will create a huge amount of false positives which in turn will make a lot of innocent customers annoyed and cause them to never come back. On the other hand it is quite likely that it will not catch any of the people in the database. Which will be an epic fail!
And I bet the mall owners state "privacy" as the reason and can't see the irony. Classy.
No, they're counting on the false positives. Then you get a coupon for 10% off anything in the mall.
GAP Sign: Hello Mr. Yukkamoto and welcome back to the GAP!
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. - HST
Given: Imagine a world were every personal movement is tracked by computer. Every transaction is recorded. Every communication, both written and spoken, is recorded. Everywhere, 7/24.
I think this was attempted by two governments already, Soviet Union, and Third Reich. Google Search of these two governments brings up nothing current in this millenium. Google Maps shows no location of these sovereign states. Grandpa says he knows about 'em, but doesn't want to talk about it; then he starts to get angry. In this day, and age, it's almost trivial to accomplish; even by third world nations. Why would such a valuable tool as knowing everything about anyone be associated with two lost empires?
Businesses are going to use this. If I had a retail business, I sure would in a heartbeat.
If I caught a shoplifter in my store, and I had video surveillance of this person that included his face, I would enter his face into my facial-recognition system so that every time that "customer" came into my store in the future, I could give him an excellent, personal customer service experience by attending him closely every time he visited my store.
Likewise, if I had video surveillance of my best customers' faces, I would enter those faces into my facial-recognition system also, so that every time /they/ came into my store I could also give them excellent, personal customer service experiences, though for entirely different reasons, of course.
In short, I would use such a system to surreptitiously provide a different shopping experience to my better customers vs. my worst ones.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Isn't this the one where Tom Cruise gets his eyes replaced with new ones to avoid being detected with retinal scans?
Between what I read about the Aussies and what I've experienced from having to work for them, their "intentions" are probably something along the lines of "Keeping those dirty filthy niggers and other 'undesirables' out of our nice, clean white-only shopping mall". How about we all copyright our faces, make it illegal to photograph us without prior written consent!