Boston Police Chief: Facial Recognition Tech Didn't Help Find Bombing Suspects

SternisheFan writes "ArsTechnica reports: 'While the whole country is relieved that this past week's Boston Marathon bombing ordeal and subsequent lockdown of the city is finally over, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told the Washington Post that the department's facial recognition system "did not identify" the two bombing suspects. "The technology came up empty even though both Tsarnaevs' images exist in official databases: Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver's license; the brothers had legally immigrated; and Tamerlan had been the subject of some FBI investigation," the Post reported on Saturday. Facial recognition systems can have limited utility when a grainy, low-resolution image captured at a distance from a cellphone camera or surveillance video is compared with a known, high-quality image. Meanwhile, the FBI is expected to release a large-scale facial recognition apparatus "next year for members of the Western Identification Network, a consortium of police agencies in California and eight other Western states," according to the San Jose Mercury News. Still, video surveillance did prove extremely useful in pinpointing the suspects.'"

Comments

Enhance it and zoom in

[Anonymous Coward]

Rinse and repeat

Re:Enhance it and zoom in

[rudy_wayne]

If only all those millions of security cameras were as good as they are on TV. But they aren't. The images they produce are shitty and worthless. So they identified the suspects by having FBI agents sitting at a monitor and watching video over and over and over.

But that won't stop the FBI from rolling out yet another billion dollar boondoggle facial recognition system.

Re:Enhance it and zoom in

[kannibal_klown]

What? You mean you can't "Zoom and enhance" a 640x480 video to the point that you can see the fingerprint left on a window 25' away

Unfortunately, I know people that actually think that stuff is legit. Which of course leads to "fun" arguments / questions about "Why can't you do THIS, I see them do it on TV all the time."

Re:Enhance it and zoom in

[kevingolding2001]

Don't forget the 'uncrop'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUFkb0d1kbU

Re:Enhance it and zoom in

[sycodon]

It should be noted that the old facial recognition software worked just fine. It was the fancy new computer based facial recognition software that failed.

Re:Enhance it and zoom in

[plover]

Actually, even low resolution cameras can be really useful, under certain conditions. If the suspect stands still for a few frames, the images can sometimes be enhanced due to motion differences between the frames. The process is like anti-aliasing in reverse.

In the video clips i saw on the news the suspects were walking, and the differences between frames looked too great to get the kind of data needed to interpolate.

If you're interested in seeing this done in a non-fakey-CSI application, Thierry Legault is an astrophotographer who uses frame interpolation to produce amazingly clear shots of objects like the ISS. See his site here to learn more: http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/

Re:Enhance it and zoom in

[pclminion]

License plates are a special case. They only have letters and numbers on them. The resolution of a camera may be too low for image processing software to extract an arbitrary image from it. But the fact that it is a license plate gives the algorithm prior knowledge which may help it extract the most likely plate number even if an arbitrary image can't be recognized.

Re:CRAFT INTERNATIONAL

[rudy_wayne]

Can anyone explain the presence of Craft International (Security Contractors) at the marathon?

Do Security Contractors frequently monitor events like this?

Maybe they were hired by the Boston Marathon. Or maybe your tinfoil hat is loose.

Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[bc90021]

If I'm not mistaken, the CCTV footage was not as useful... what did help was the one man who took a picture of the bomber (unbeknownst to him at the time), and more importantly, the unfortunate man whose legs were blown off at the knees who valiantly gave an ID from his hospital bed.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

We should petition the whitehouse to include all the victims of the bombing without health insurance to buy into medicare/medicaid or federal employees health insurace scheme. The premia to join may be paid from the general accident victims compensation fund or through donations.

BTW if we have a single payer health insurance system, this would not even be an issue.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If Dzhokhar is deemed an enemy combatant, all the victims would lose their health insurance coverage. Most insurance does not cover Acts of War. When Bush declared 9/11 attacks as an act of war in his original speech, insurance companies invoked the exception and refused to pay WTC building insurance. Then they claimed both plane crashes actually constitute a "single instance" and reduced the claims by half. So don't put anything past our vaunted private health insurance companies.

Health insurance will not work in a free market. Insurance works only when the claimants and the insurer does not know who will file a claim and whose policies will expire without any claims. You don't know when/if your house will burn down or your car will be totaled. Nor do insurance companies. This model will work in free market.

In health care, diabetics, heart disease patients, cancer surviors, transplant recipients know how much they are going claim for sure. So does the insurer. Free market will force companies to refuse to insure them. People without chronic condition will refuse to buy policies.

For health care, single payer is the only system that will work. The savings from paperwork and preventive treatment will be enough to pay for the people currently without insurance and to contain the growth of health care costs.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

You should first understand what you mean by "efficiency". Efficiency in private sector is making maximum possible money for private companies. If providing goods and services at the lowest price to the consumer is the only way to make money, they will do so. All the benefits of private sector comes only when there is high degree of competition between the private companies and there is an informed consumers making rational choices to provide feedback. In the present private sector health care, people are not free to switch their health care providers, it is being bundled with their employment. The moment the customers are not able to switch the competition disappears. At this point private sector will continually sacrifice service for profits. It is as simple as that.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I maintain my own insurance and everyone else should do the same.

Really? You are buying private health insurance as an individual? Either you are crazy or you are swimming in money or you are being swindled.

My W2 shows how much my company has been paying for my health care. Works out to 10K a year for a family. My brother is an independent contractor. He cant buy anything for less than 20K for equivalent coverage. By joining some network of independents he is buying it for some 14K.

It is very much possible to buy the same coverage for as little as 8K. But the moment you file a claim, they jack up your rates, and if you have chronic conditions they bump you off and do not renew. All the premia you have paid all these years thinking you have coverage? Sit down, it might come as a shock to you. The private health care companies that you are so vociferously defending anonymously, will dump you in a second.

But I could be wrong. You could be one of the shills hired by the private health care companies to get on early on the threads and defend health care companies. You might simply be doing your job.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[Xest]

Is there really something valiant and courageous about ID'ing the person who just turned you into an amputee?

I'm not belittling the man, I feel awful for him as that's one of the most horrendous life changing things I can imagine happening, but I'm not entirely sure what heroic act this man has performed, he's done what anyone in his situation would do - the maximum he can to exact revenge.

Perhaps this is a cultural thing, but the bravado being shown regarding people who did what anyone would expect them to do between this and the poor MIT officer who got shot dead without being given chance to defend himself strikes me as a little odd.

I would argue, the heroes, if any, are those who rushed to the aid of the injured without knowing if they themselves could become victims of another bomb or attack as they did so, not the poor sods who died or are led in hospital beds - they're unfortunate victims. Is no one allowed to be a victim in America? Must every victim be made a hero whilst the real heroes go unnamed and unknown?

Certainly I imagine that if this is what heroism is, the guy led missing his legs would rather be one of the unknown and unnamed.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[TubeSteak]

Health insurance will not work in a free market. Insurance works only when the claimants and the insurer does not know who will file a claim and whose policies will expire without any claims. You don't know when/if your house will burn down or your car will be totaled. Nor do insurance companies. This model will work in free market.

They may not know when your house will burn down, but by using statistics, they know the risk of homes like yours burning down.

I think you severely underestimate the usefulness and effectiveness of the actuarial sciences.
The insurance companies are so sure of their statistics, that they only thing they buy secondary insurance for is natural disasters.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Sir, I do understand the powers of actuarial sciences. In fact I know its history without going to wiki. What the insurance companies know is statistically how many houses are expected to burn down in their insured risk pool. But they do not know which specific ones. Nor do the home owners. So all home owners voluntarily buy insurance, and are relieved their houses are standing the end of the coverage period, see the peace of mind worth the cost and buy the insurance again. But if you know for sure you house is going to burn down, the insurance companies will refuse to cover you. In fact if there is substantial chance it will burn down, they will refuse to cover you or write riders excluding it. Look at the number of insurance companies operating within 10 miles of Atlantic coast in Florid or how many sand bar islands are "no coverage area" in the Carolinas.

Insurance works, only when it is operating on large sample sizes and liklihood estimates and expected values and statistics. If it is specific and individualized, they stop working. A diabetic knows exactly how much his insulin is going to cost. And will buy insurance only if the premium is less than the expected claims. The insurance company will not insure him for less than the cost of claims known `a priori. This is a deadlock.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[squizzar]

Or you could be informed... and look at reality. Highest cost as percentage of GDP in the world, coverage of 2/3rd the population? Yay US! I've got private healthcare (it's often a job perk in the UK), but I also know that if I lost my job tomorrow, had some chronic illness or something that wasn't covered I'd still be fine. I get taxed for it, but I still feel more 'free' than I would were it necessary to be employed or maintain a private health insurance policy for coverage. Also we get much more holiday over here, no worries about random gun violence - our police are generally unarmed because they generally don't need to be armed, and you get all the rain you can complain about.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[Karl Cocknozzle]

All the benefits of private sector comes only when there is high degree of competition between the private companies and there is an informed consumers making rational choices to provide feedback.

This is the biggest myth about health care: That people make "rational, informed" choices. They don't. You don't have an appendix attack and shop around to a few hospitals to see who has the best rate: They put you in the ambulance and you go to the closest place with a resource available to save your life. As for a "free market" in health care, that's an interesting academic discussion, but certainly isn't something that will ever exist in the real world.

There is a massive barrier to entry in providing services: You can't just up and become a doctor. There's licensing, education, and liability insurance premiums. In a "free market" new providers would rush to provide the service that has become so rare that the price spiked. But that's an 8-12 years pipeline to add new doctors, and a 2-6 year pipeline for new RNs, MSNs. And all of that adds up to this: It isn't really a free market, and there probably isn't much hope of it ever becoming one because sick patients will always be mostly frightened and want the first option that saves their lives. Our society will never allow any random to person to just say "I'm a doctor!" and provide medical care. So we're stuck: We can't grow the supply of doctors and high-skill nurses fast enough to provide care for all the sick people, and we can't get sick people to say "fuck you! I'd rather die than pay that much!" (yet) so that's where it stands.

It ain't a "free market," and it can't become a "Free market" in the foreseeable future. Get back to me if mankind can evolve out of mortal fear for his own existence to the point where he can "shop around" for the cheapest E.R. after he breaks a leg, gets hit by a car, or has an appendix attack.

Re:Wasn't It As Much Individual Photog & ID?

[interkin3tic]

Just to note, Bauman (the guy we're talking about, lost legs, IDed bomber) DOES have health insurance

Not only does Bauman have employer-sponsored health coverage through Costco — the company “is also matching donations made by colleagues at the chain’s Nashua location,” according to a more recent Globe article from Friday. Bauman is being forced to raise funds despite this assistance due to the extraordinarily high costs associated with the amount of current and ongoing care that he requires.

Personally, I think this is a perfect example of why having health insurance run by for-profit organizations is a terrible idea and why the taxpayers paying for health insurance would be better. Anyway, the victims are being taken care of better than most citizens will be, as of friday, three had sites where people could donate to their health costs, and they were all above $400k. In at least Bauman's case, his employer is matching, so that's more like $800k.

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Boston Police Chief: Facial Recognition Tech Didn't Help Find Bombing Suspects"

Thousands of paramilitary, guns, Humvees, helicopters, robots, hours and hours of lockdown of millions of people and the suspect went uncaught.

A homeowner on a smoke break finds him.

Who the fuck cares about facial recognition, I say arm the citizens and save money and time.

Re:WTF?

[rvw]

Who the fuck cares about facial recognition, I say arm the citizens and save money and time.

Go to Somalia and find out how good that works out.

Face recognition technology isn't very good

[swillden]

Current-generation face-recognition systems have a false positive rate of about 1 in 1,000 even when they have excellent images to work with -- high-resolution, well-lit, full-face frontal photos with no obscuring hats, glasses, etc. So even if CCTVs captured excellent images, if you're searching a database of tens of millions you're going to get a lot of matches. In a case like the Boston bombing it's okay if you get a few thousand hits because there is manpower available to sort through and narrow those down to the dozens which the (much more accurate) human eye/brain can't distinguish, and then there's manpower available to chase down each of those leads.

When you reduce the image quality, though, make it grainy, at an angle, poorly lit, and throw in some baseball caps... forget it. You have to reduce the match threshold, and then instead of thousands of candidate matches, you have tens or hundreds of thousands. For that matter, consider the fact that humans can't deal well with those constraints, and we're social animals who devote a significant portion of our enormous brain capacity to exactly this task.