US Military Seeks Non-Cooperative Biometric Tracking Technology

An anonymous reader writes "Interesting article on the upcoming efforts of the Department of Defense biometric capabilities and the ability to non-cooperatively tag, track, and locate individuals from a variety of military UAV platforms. Quoting Wired: "[The] Army just handed out a half-dozen contracts to firms to find faces from above, track targets, and even spot 'adversarial intent.' 'If this works out, we'll have the ability to track people persistently across wide areas', says Dr. Tim Faltemier, the lead biometrics researcher at Progeny Systems Corporation, which recently won one of the Army contracts. 'A guy can go under a bridge or inside a house. But when he comes out, we'll know it was the same guy that went in.'"

Comments

Interesting

[Antisyzygy]

I worked on a facial recognition biometrics project in grad school as a research assistant, the leading platform we found to compete against was Pitt-patt and even it wasn't suitable for this application. This research area is flooded with research, and most people are not taking ground-breaking steps.

Re:Interesting

[bzipitidoo]

Facial recognition is a difficult problem. Not just technically either. Too many people want this too much. They also don't appreciate all the difficulties. They're plums ripe for being taken in by scams.

Something I've come to appreciate is that comparisons are relatively easy. It's the representation that's the killer. Pixels are a completely brain dead way to represent an image. Very easy to do, but not useful for the kinds of comparisons needed for facial recognition.

Then there's the matter of scale. Can any facial recognition system handle millions of faces? Cops want to throw their entire photo collection of suspects into the system, so it can check anyone it sees against every suspect they have on file. Even if the system made an incorrect match in only 0.1% of the comparisons, that's still a match to a thousand of every million people in the database.

Wow, really?

[Fallen Kell]

'A guy can go under a bridge or inside a house. But when he comes out, we'll know it was the same guy that went in.'

I guess until they all just wear mask... Got to love multi-billion dollar systems that get defeated by a $3 piece of clothing.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

A face is only one way to identify someone- one which humans use extensively. But not the only one. The way you walk, the way you hold yourself, your body size and shape, your voice, and a host of other attributes are all fairly unique, when you look closely enough. Combining a group of them makes it even more powerful.

Re:Wow, really?

[AJH16]

That also assumes other bio-metrics such as height, build, gait, etc are not analyzed to determine if the person is the same. There are more to biometrics than simply recognizing a face.

Re:Wow, really?

[Commontwist]

Suddenly the market for my Darth Vader costume/portable air conditioning system hybrid opens up!

"This isn't the suspect you're looking for."

Trust us

[sl4shd0rk]

It's for military combat only. We'd never use it on our own people*

* unless those people are assembled in mass numbers representing a potential for threatening movement or when regarded by law enforcement as a public safety concern or causing a public disturbance.

Re:Trust us

[durrr]

No special clause, the military will use it only for military purpose, but given that police are already begging for(and getting) UAVs of their own and the contractors that develop the tech are profit driven it will take approximately 20 minutes before you find it in use against the local populance everywhere.

Re:Trust us

[royallthefourth]

but given that police are already begging for(and getting) UAVs of their own.

We don't need any exotic new scenarios to be sure it will be used against us; a hundred years ago the National Guard made it clear by turning machine guns on striking workers. They'll never shy away from violence, whether it's overseas or right here at home. Anything to keep the profits coming and above all, the system intact.
Once they feel threatened, it only takes a minute for them to show their true face.

Re:Trust us

[dkleinsc]

a hundred years ago the National Guard made it clear by turning machine guns on striking workers

And 41 years ago, they turned the guns on unarmed students.

If you consider non-lethal weapons, then you can look at the videos earlier this week of police pepper-spraying people for the crime of standing on the sidewalk looking like a protester.

Never enough.

[Beelzebud]

When it comes to the military industrial complex, there is never enough money that can be dumped down the hole.

And from the right-wing lovers of the constitution, and haters of government spending: Complete silent obedience.

Re:Never enough.

[frosty_tsm]

When it comes to the military industrial complex, there is never enough money that can be dumped down the hole. And from the right-wing lovers of the constitution, and haters of government spending: Complete silent obedience.

Sad but true. "Keep the government out of our medicare." "Don't tax the job creators."

But any time something is spun towards the big bad terrorists, they'll be silent when we dump billions to accomplish nothing and even bend over and spread them (literally).

I think I know where this is going

[TheNarrator]

They use a pagerank like algorithm to analyze the person's social network (links in an out) and the person's actions (page content) and then compute a "TerrorScore" much like a google "Page Rank". They then knock these guys off one by one with UAVs. The whole thing runs unattended. Nobody knows exactly why people get killed, that's just the algorithm. They can't turn it off either unfortunately, because then the terrorists would win! Quick, somebody write a screenplay :).

I'd love to see this go FOSS

[Rich0]

I've been thinking about just sticking some cameras on my property and creating a database of every face they see and when, and every license plate that drives by.

I figure everybody else is doing it, so why not private individuals.

Post it all in one big free database online, and now everybody knows where everybody lives and works and what they're doing. Maybe the solution to privacy is for nobody to have it. Since, right now the only thing I can be sure of is that ordinary people don't have it. Equality would keep everybody more honest. Social norms/etc would just have to change.

Re:Non-Cooperative Biometric Tracking Technology

[Cyberax]

INSERT INTO terror_watch_list (select * from all_people);