The Wall That Knows If You're a Criminal

Barence writes "A German company called Dermalog is showing off a wall-sized transparent display that can tell a person's age, mood and criminal intent simply by scanning their face. The system displays data about the user next to their face, and is a demonstration of a fraud-prevention system that matches criminal intent to certain characteristics. PC Pro's tester wasn't overly impressed. 'If the face was a good enough indicator of mood then it should have tagged me as "freaked out on business technological ennui," not simply "happy", and no police force would accept a description of someone as "aged between 45 and 75 — that's the gap between Daniel Craig and Jack Nicholson.'"

Comments

Face scan?

[clam666]

Phrenology!

Re:Face scan?

[jythie]

My thoughts exactly. I thought that was a bit of pseudoscience we had seen the last of...

Then again, the whole 'reading' people seems to be a new fad that has really picked up over the last few years. Books, TV shows, newsertainment, all trying to claim you can magically tell what someone is really thinking/intending without them knowing.... and even today they teach this garbage to LEO as if it was actually accurate.

Re:Face scan?

[sribe]

Phrenology!

Nope, not at all!

Phrenology on a computer! Which is obviously completely different and patent-worthy!

Re:Face scan?

[kannibal_klown]

Well, there are facial cues that statistically indicate you're feeling emotion X, trying to act manipulative, considering lying, etc. Not the common misconception of "looking to the left means this, to the right means that" but other things.

Some say it's very accurate. I'm in the belief that, even if it is... it's just statistics.

Humans are strange and there are lots of outliers: emotionally, psychologically, mentally, and even physically. So people shouldn't put too much faith into it and condemn someone just because they hit a few of the cues.

Even if 99% of people do this facial tick 99% of the time... there are billions of people alive today... not to mention there have been billions of people that have lived and died. As such, that 1% is a large number of people for who that tick might mean something else.

Re:Face scan?

[dpilot]

I don't believe TFA does this, but a few days back I saw an article hosted at MIT about cameras/video processing that "sees the unseen" by amplification of small differences. For instance, by exaggerating minute color changes in the face they were able to see peoples' heartbeats. They also amplified small movements of buildings, peoples' eyes, etc.

There is a whole slew of visual cues that we don't normally perceive, at least not consciously. The MIT article shows some of them. Now put together TFA with what MIT has done, and your statistics get better - perhaps frighteningly. (Perhaps what's even more frightening is when the statistics really haven't gotten better, but people believe that they have.)

Re:Face scan?

[TheCarp]

Exactly and thats just the start of it.

So you are walking into a building that requires you sign in, you show your ID, the system tells the security desk that you are 45, but your ID says 26. If it does this too often, it will either be ignored (useless system) or cause people to be detained needlessly (useless and costly).

You just had a screaming match with your soon to be ex wife over the phone driving in... ut oh, emotional distress right there.

Even wost, you may end up with people having major panic attacks because the scanner is telling security this person is under huge emotional stress, causing them to watch more closely and cause more anxiety.

Then the sociopath walks in and starts spinning well meshed lies right to the security gaurds face, and the scanner picks up no emotional stress, because he isn't really under any. But thats ok, security is too busy having the police escort out the girl who just broke down in a panic to really deal with him anyway.

Re:Face scan?

[steelfood]

Then the sociopath walks in and starts spinning well meshed lies right to the security gaurds face, and the scanner picks up no emotional stress, because he isn't really under any. But thats ok, he's the CEO of the company who owns the building.

FTFY.

Oh, by the way, his company is too big to fail.

Re:Face scan?

[F'Nok]

Actually, anyone that falls into any one of quite a large number of groups with emotional/psychological differences will almost certainly be misread by such things at least a noticeable portion of the time.

Autism spectrum, AD/HD, bipolar, and an assortment of other labels and people that might be considered part of the 'highly sensitive persons' end of the human spectrum.

These sorts of technologies are going to be hell for all those people if they fall into more common use. These things are already a significant issue when law enforcement misread such people, having a computer back up their misreading would be appalling.

Doesn't work? Doesn't matter.

[XxtraLarGe]

That still won't stop DHS from ordering one for every security line.

Re:Doesn't work? Doesn't matter.

[i kan reed]

How else are they going to generate the annual false positives they need to point to to justify their own existence, then, smart guy?

Re:Doesn't work? Doesn't matter.

[Seumas]

Of course it doesn't matter. The same way the actual reliability of a drug sniffing dog alerting on you doesn't matter. This will be yet another thing with massive false positives that is merely used to justify the choices of the police force, without them having to accept the blame for their decisions.

Re:Doesn't work? Doesn't matter.

[Thanshin]

Hard to sell.

Imagine a conference room with a salesman, a CEO and a bunch of politicians. Who do you propose they use to check whether the machine is actually capable of giving a negative?

Re:Doesn't work? Doesn't matter.

[Antipater]

Imagine a conference room with a salesman, a CEO and a bunch of politicians. Who do you propose they use to check whether the machine is actually capable of giving a negative?

The schmuck they had to pull into the room to help them find the "on" button.

Re:Doesn't work? Doesn't matter.

[TheCarp]

Clearly you have not been exposed to the public sector.

All departments justify their existance by spending all of the money that they are allocated in the budget. To not spend it, is to say to the people who do the budgeting "we are not doing our job, cut us or replace us". To just spend it.... well, that doesn't really show the kind of initiative of people who want to really go above and beyond.

No, to survive, departments must justify their existance, which is defined as using up all of the money allocated to them, and submitting plans to spend even more.

This is just how the system is setup. Incidentally, its not limited to government. I have worked in non-profit healthcare and academia. While the details do change with the ebb and flow of organizational finances, when there is money to spend, you will even hear managers asking for things to spend it on "The fiscal year is almost up, we still have budget to spend"... and when times are lean watch out, every other group should be the ones to sacrifice, our mission is too important.

Which is part of the problem with tasking departments, you get what you ask them to do. Even if there is only benefit in doing a little of something, so long as they exist, they will nearly without fail, find reasons to expand and do more.

To take a weird example, when i worked at the University we laughed at a new rule banning students in dorms from having sex with anyone else in the room, including their dorm roomate. Silly but, someone pointed out it was nearly perfect because the only way to get caught was for the person to complain, so roomates who didn't care could go about as they pleased.

But what happens when you task a department with the job of making sure students are not having sex in the room with others? It totally changes whats going on. Does it make sense to put up posters with tip lines? To roam the halls with a notepad looking for potential incidents? In the end, you really get what you want.... a clear guidence for domestic dispute resolution, just by having the original rule, even without active enforcement.

Its been said a person can't comprehend things that contradict the notion of his salary.... this most definitely extends to the concept of diminishing (or long since vanished) returns.

Queue Schoolhouse Rock

[mark-t]

It knows when...
You're happy [hooray!]
Or sad [aw!]
Or fightened [eek!]
Or mad[rats!]
Or excited [wow!]
Or glad [hey!]
.... So it's basically, a visual interjection detector. Nifty.

Yet it will make criminals pass

[zwei2stein]

Most succesfull criminals generally have:

  * Honest looking face, do not avert eye contant and have firm grip
  * Dress the same or a bit better than their marks.
  * Are happy and unconcerned when doing their work.
  * Bathed and groomed.
  * Get a bit of charisma.
  * Are not dumb.

This is incredibly important for pickpockets - if you are in suit and looking like you are just comming from business meeting, people will not suspect a thing. And if you get caught, you can talk your way out because it can be played as misunderstanding.

Compare this to badly dressed, tatooed, nervous member of differently colored minory which causes people put their hands on their valuables immediatelly. (Those are good to detecting where people have their valuable stuff so that their coworker has much easier time)

Any system that judges people on looks is going to be way too stupid to know this. Most people are too scared to notice real dangers. And now they made software that mimicks this stupidity.

Bravo.

And we are not event getting to how evil this thing is because of basically labeling people randomly as criminals.

Re:Yet it will make criminals pass

[Graydyn Young]

Most succesfull criminals generally have

I think you're giving criminals a lot of credit here. Especially with the pickpocket example. From what I've seen the most successful pickpockets are just too young to punch.

Re:Yet it will make criminals pass

[kannibal_klown]

I think you're over glamorizing the common criminal.

Sure, there are tons of con-men and con-women out there that could talk you out of your wallet's contents with a wink of an eye. And sure, there are a lot of well-dressed pick pockets out there... so you don't think they're up to something. And lets not even delve into the white-collar criminals.

But a majority of criminals are not that sophisticated and wearing decent clothes. There are PLENTY of thugs out there as well as hoodlum kids.

Try walking down a bad part of Newark or Chicago some time. Trust me, if-and-when you are the victim of a crime it won't be the handsome guy in a suit or the hawt girl in a nice dress. Chances are it will be a thug (of ANY color / creed / whatever) that takes your stuff.

Re:Yet it will make criminals pass

[Hatta]

Most succesfull criminals generally have:

    * Honest looking face, do not avert eye contant and have firm grip
    * Dress the same or a bit better than their marks.
    * Are happy and unconcerned when doing their work.
    * Bathed and groomed.
    * Get a bit of charisma.
    * Are not dumb.

This is incredibly important for pickpockets

Not just pick pockets. Politicians, lawyers, bankers, salesmen, and insurance agents too. These groups are responsible for the crime that causes the most damage to society. The ghetto thugs and disheveled crazy people are negligible risks compared to these people.

Re:Yet it will make criminals pass

[Hatta]

Almost. Engineers wear ties too sometimes.

Re:Reliability

[kelemvor4]

So Daniel Craig walks up to this scanner and is greeted by a female voice that goes, "Good morning, Mr. Nicholson. We have detected that you are about to commit a felony. We strongly urge you to reconsider."

Or, "Good morning, Mr. Nicholson. Please enjoy this taser shock before our agents perform a body cavity search".

DMV lines

[stenvar]

Since "criminal intent" seems to be largely defined as "not happy", 95% of people in various government office waiting rooms will be flagged as having "criminal intent". I suppose it clears out the waiting rooms faster.

Better to just post Santa Claus at the gate

[fustakrakich]

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good...

Put one in a bar...

[ravenscar]

If you put one of these in a bar and charged $.50 per face scan you'd make a fortune. At this point, this is probably all that this is good for anyhow.

Re:Reliability

[GodfatherofSoul]

Oh please, James Bond would just fuck the scanner then kill it in the morning when it tried to tase him in his sleep.

A Novel Algorithm for Detecting Criminals

[indeterminator]

Step 1: Flag the person as a criminal.
That's all the steps. The chance of false positive is very small. Most people either have already done something illegal, or will do something illegal at some point of their lives.

Very simple

[lahvak]

It works just like our cops - it looks at the color of your skin: if your skin is somewhat darker, you are a criminal!

facecrime

[Anonymous Coward]

facecrime: An indication that a person is guilty of thoughtcrime based on their facial expression. Orwell's definition : "It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."

The 1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual. :(

Accurate?

[WizADSL]

Does it distinguish between true criminal intent and the desire to smash the display for being so nosy?

Psycho-Pass

[Ultra64]

Sounds like Psycho-Pass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho-Pass#Plot