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

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?

[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.

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.