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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.
.... 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?
I don't think tht this will be used for more than warning the security officers at mall when someone who was caught earlier for stealing comes again into mall.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
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.
Ah, yes. I should have been thinking of the children all along. This erosion loss of my own right to privacy is all good, because of the benefits to the children.
No matter that most kids are abused at their home or in the home of another family member or close family friend. Let's put security cams up in the mall. That'll solve it.
But seriously now, I'm not sure about the implications of these things: would a mall count as public or private? Generally, you wouldn't be allowed to take photos in a mall because it's private property, and they're obviously allowed to take photos of you, because they own the joint. However, what would Joe Public be able to do if he was flagged as a criminal through a false positive?
I'd be pretty pissed if some fool tasered me while I was grocery shopping on a Saturday morning 'cos the camera erroneously ID'd me as the local pedobear or whatever...
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.
If you ignore the possible invasion of privacy which is kind of moot in such a public place
I find fault with that logic. You wear clothes in public, don't you? That's privacy in a public place, it clearly exists. Being automatically identified by a computer, WOULD eventually be used to track you between destinations and WOULD eventually be used for things which are not at all security related (such as in minority report, vending machines calling to you personally.) You can and will lose your privacy in public and in private if this shit continues.
If you were being facetious, you need to be a little less subtle, or else it's just borderline trolling.
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."
You wear clothes in public, don't you?
Yes, but only because last time I tried not to, they put my face in their database.
...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.
...but it seems like it's the Brits and Aussies who actually end up taking it seriously.
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.
Except for the number of sex offenders who slept with their 15 year old gf when they were 17. If sex offender status is going to be taken seriously we need to stop throwing the status at young couples. Until then, it's a mark that says "I might have done something bad." but so is being human.
That's not all they put in their database.
Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain. --Friederich Schiller
Yes, but only because last time I tried not to, they put my face in their database.
Only your face?
Are you seriously suggesting it's a good idea that anyone who has ever shoplifted should never be let near a shopping centre ever again in their life? In your think of the children rant did it ever occur to you that giving people who are in a position to abuse their authority tools to track and observe a childs every move is a terrible idea? Do you want your child to be living in a panopticon?
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.
IANAL, but as far as I understand in the US, malls and department stores cannot physically restrain you or hold you against your will. They are not the police. If they have damning evidence that you were engaging in criminal activities they can get the police, but I don't think they can arrest you or even stop you from leaving. (I am assuming for things like shoplifting, or destruction of property... not fiddling a kid in aisle 3)
As far as being erroneously flagged as a criminal... well I hope they call the police to do the police work, and then I hope the police ask a few questions before they fire the taser barbs into your back... although I'm doubtful lately.
There's a difference between "someone might see me" and "someone is watching my every move". The latter is stalking, and we have laws against stalkers. And I don't think "officer, I stalked him just in case he happened to be a criminal" would fly in court.
I don't. I can understand why such people might be banned from working as kindergarden teachers or other positions requiring trust, but banning them from shops because there might be children in the same building is just ridiculous. The whole "sex offender" thing is nowadays simply used as an excuse to bully a socially accepted target; I find the practice every bit as disgusting as rape.
Not that being a "sex offender" has anything to do with rape, or even with sex; you can get on the list for urinating in public.
Think of the chiiildren!
Ironically enough, without the whole "sex offender" hysteria lost children would probably be escorted to security personnel, who would then find the parents. Instead everyone will steer clear of them for fear of being accused of being a "predator", the accusation being sufficient to get them inserted into the sex offender registry and apparently banned from malls forever, as well as being subjected to any arbitrary punishment someone who "thinks of the children" can come up with.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"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.
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.
Considering how easy it is to get on the sex offender list without being any sort of danger to children (or anyone else), I'm not so sure that would be a good thing.
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?