Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Japanese CCTV Camera Can Scan 36 Million Faces/Second

Posted by timothy on from the once-met-alex-jones-at-mt-carmel-compound dept.

An of-course anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the always-fun Infowars.com: "A new camera technology from Hitachi Hokusai Electric can scan days of camera footage instantly, and find any face which has EVER walked past it. Its makers boast that it can scan 36 million faces per second. The technology raises the spectre of governments – or other organisations – being able to 'find' anyone instantly simply using a passport photo or a Facebook profile. The 'trick' is that the camera 'processes' faces as it records, so that all faces which pass in front of it are recorded and stored instantly. Faces are stored as a searchable 'biometric' record, placing the unique mathematical 'faceprint' of anyone who has ever walked past the camera in a database."

11 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. The future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And here I was thinkin' that the level of surveillance seen in GITS wouldn't be seen in my lifetime...

    1. Re:The future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ghost In The Shell.

    2. Re:The future by Internetuser1248 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are alternatives if you don't want to wear a mask. Some of these are also less likely to get you hassled by the police. Someone should make a version of these face paint techniques that uses national flags and national team colours, then everyone will just assume you are a sports fan.

  2. Misleading Headline... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    "The trick is that the camera processes faces as it records, so that all faces which pass in front of it are recorded and stored instantly. Faces are stored as a searchable biometric record"

    So basically it search for a record in a sorted list of up to 36 million records in under a second? Not exactly revolutionary...

    1. Re:Misleading Headline... by yfkar · · Score: 3, Informative
      I wondered about the headline too. My first thought was that how on Earth could you get 36 million people to fit into one second of footage AND process it in real time. Even the article wasn't very clear about it.

      Also:

      Faces are stored as a searchable 'biometric' record, storing the unique

      It seems that the writer of the article didn't even bother to

    2. Re:Misleading Headline... by RNLockwood · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree but it searches for a set of records that have some kind of a close match and doesn't stop with the first "hit" a la CSI.

      Wonder why there was no mention of the false positive and false negative rates? Perhaps they are a little too high?

      --
      Nate
  3. Smile! You're on Creepy Camera! by Cazekiel · · Score: 3, Funny

    If I lived in Japan, I'd walk around with THE stupidest smile ever, eyes wide as saucers, pretending that everything I'm looking at is the most fascinating thing in the universe. I mean, I do this ALREADY, but I'd up the ante severely, all so I can imagine officials watching the surveillance tapes muttering, "WTF is this chick on?"

    --
    You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
  4. No expectation of privacy by cpu6502 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In a public area.

    So maybe it's time to amend the Constitution. "The government or its agents shall not track people's whereabouts, except when a warrant has been obtained through a judge, and supported by oath or affirmation."

    --
    My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
  5. The headline is wrong!! by jklovanc · · Score: 5, Informative

    Come on editors do your job. The headline is "Japanese CCTV Camera Can Scan 36 Million Faces/Second". That is not even close to what this system is doing. System does the following;
    1. creates a thumbnail picture of the face. How long this takes is not noted.
    2. Searches a database for matches. This is where the 36 Million faces/second comes in and is not done by the camera at all.

    A better headline would have been "Japanese CCTV Camera Can Search Through 36 Million Faces/Second". That is a much less impressive feat than scanning as it is just a way of encoding a face for faster searches.

  6. Re:Won't work for smart criminals/terrorists by Gaygirlie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Indeed. However, there are still ways of fooling them with makeup and a few bits of silicone, and both are easy to apply and take off. For example adding a wee bit of skin-coloured silicone on your cheekbones and forehead totally changes how you look. Then apply some slightly darker blush on your cheeks and eyesockets and you'll look like an entirely different person. Then just wipe the makeup on your sleeve, pick the silicone off with your fingers and you'll be your old self in less than 30 seconds.

  7. For pete's sake, can we get a decent source by jfengel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The link is to a paranoid source (Infowars), citing a disreputable newspaper (The Daily Mail), citing (but not linking to) a press release, for a product which the abysmally sketchy article is available "within the next tax year". None of which even begins to mention its actual capabilities beyond the misrepresented data point of "scanning 36 million faces".

    In other words, unless somebody has a link to something of value, the entire thing seems like fiction designed to give people something to be pleasantly outraged about on a Saturday afternoon.