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US Intelligence Wants To Radically Advance Facial Recognition Software
coondoggie writes "Identifying people from video streams or boatloads of images can be a daunting task for humans and computers. But a 4-year development program set to start in April 2014 known as Janus aims to develop software and algorithms that erase those problems and could radically alter the facial recognition world as we know it. Funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's 'high-risk, high-payoff research' group, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Janus 'seeks to improve face recognition performance using representations developed from real-world video and images instead of from calibrated and constrained collections.'"
The faces on TV look all alike and nothing like anybody would go out on the street with. I'd add "particularly terrorists" but it has become increasingly clear that the NSA is not wasting all its resources just by keeping tabs on their purported targets. Heck, they are so busy jacking off to everybody that they can't bother following multiple explicit leads handed on a silver platter to them (Boston marathon anybody?).
They are not interested in the needles. They want the haystacks.
At any rate: the usual surveillance camera and its clientele presents quite a different job than a soap opera. Heck, most people would not recognize celebrity in street attire.