FBI Completes New Face Recognition System
Advocatus Diaboli writes:
According to a report from Gizmodo, "After six years and over one billion dollars in development, the FBI has just announced that its new biometric facial recognition software system is finally complete. Meaning that, starting soon, photos of tens of millions of U.S. citizen's faces will be captured by the national system on a daily basis. The Next Generation Identification (NGI) program will logs all of those faces, and will reference them against its growing database in the event of a crime. It's not just faces, though. Thanks to the shared database dubbed the Interstate Photo System (IPS), everything from tattoos to scars to a person's irises could be enough to secure an ID. What's more, the FBI is estimating that NGI will include as many as 52 million individual faces by next year, collecting identified faces from mug shots and some job applications." Techdirt points out that an assessment of how this system affects privacy was supposed to have preceded the actual rollout. Unfortunately, that assessment is nowhere to be found.
Two recent news items are related. First, at a music festival in Boston last year, face recognition software was tested on festival-goers. Boston police denied involvement, but were seen using the software, and much of the data was carelessly made available online. Second, both Ford and GM are working on bringing face recognition software to cars. It's intended for safety and security — it can act as authentication and to make sure the driver is paying attention to the road.
Two recent news items are related. First, at a music festival in Boston last year, face recognition software was tested on festival-goers. Boston police denied involvement, but were seen using the software, and much of the data was carelessly made available online. Second, both Ford and GM are working on bringing face recognition software to cars. It's intended for safety and security — it can act as authentication and to make sure the driver is paying attention to the road.
Vegas casinos were doing this years ago...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Anything done with our tax money should be done with the consent of the governed.
I do not consent.
Once it's rushed out without our consent, all us dissenters can be cataloged and tracked :-(
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I do not consent.
Unfortunately, many of the sheep in this country (and elsewhere, particularly Australia and the British Empire) simply don't care.
You are overruled. Move along...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
How is this not an invasion of privacy when the police is taking records of where everybody is going at all times, w/o probable cause or warrant ?
1) google "retire in France" 2) post this
I, for one, welcome our new, umm, overlords.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Seems like I'll need to get a hockey mask to go with my tinfoil hat.
OOooo, or maybe one of those high-def ex-Presidential masks!
i do believe in spooks.
Some of us care more about criminals hiding in plain sight than we do about our privacy.
with starting a grassroots revolution that involves dismantling the status quo..... some tailored busting, false flag action..and off it goes... these tools are too powerful to be put in the hands of a government, no matter how 'nice'.
Which is reasonable (privacy is an illusion anyway).
The main problem is that too many people have been behaving hypocritically and would be easily blackmailed. The secondary problem is that out asinine legislative system has built up layers of crappy laws that no one follows because they're stupid and too hard to enforce (like the states where oral sex is illegal). A reduction in privacy would enable garter selective enforcment of those laws.
That's going to make the transition period really painful.
Do you mean politicians?
With crime on an incredible downswing, I don't see how anyone can justify draconian measures for law enforcement when it is becoming less and less likely that they will be the victim of a crime.
Wow, an insightful and rarely articulated point, supported by hard data! Where are mod points when I need them?
State DMVs have for some time been compiling digital photo databases. I know Oregon has because they had to bring "someone more familiar with the software" in when they took my license photo. I have a sizable beard and mustache, and I believe the software had difficulty finding my mouth. ... I didn't offer to help.
If cars are going to have some "if you aren't facing the road, we're going to shut the car off" routine, I may be somewhat restricted in my choice of automobile, or at least options packages...
There are always these: http://petapixel.com/2013/06/1...
and of course, it'd be amusing to see what'd happen if you taped a picture of yours truly Mr. President onto you fac
I see your point. The problem of course is when you become the criminal. In the future I suspect there will be a lot more restrictions. A lot more and they already have the system coming into place that will insure compliance with whatever they mandate. The reason of course is that in about 8 years or so the government will be bankrupt and when they can't write those checks without printing ridiculous amounts of phony money there will be a lot of people that will suddenly find their monthly check doesn't buy a living, even a meager one. That's the day they will need all this stuff to control a pissed off and hungry populace.
I've got a Barack Obama mask. It's a hoot at Halloween. The kids laugh like crazy.
Get even. Post anything at all that you can find on the head of the FBI (et al.) -- him in that capacity and outside of it.
Sunglasses royally fuck up most face detection software. It's even better than putting your hair in front of one eye a la Dr. Blight in Captain Planet. Someone else linked to this, which is another, even better option (once they make them more "stylish" so you won't be drawing attention to yourself by wearing them): http://petapixel.com/2013/06/1...
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
As with all relative terms "less likely" is not good enough. Crime rates are still too high and there are still too many known criminals on the loose. We should use what ever technology we have to bring the number of at loose criminals as close to zero as possible.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/1... $70 but I think I'll just wear my Groucho Marks glasses instead.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
And by using Windows everyone have the chance to share in the bounty.
Good point. However I'd like to point out that the prison system is a private company with vested interest in having "clients". If no one breaks any laws, then these companies have a lot to lose.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
I for one don't want to live in your perfectly ordered dystopia.
No shit. Do you think the majority of the population supports this? Especially after all the known incidents of domestic spying, illegal wiretaps, secret no fly lists, free speech zones for demonstrators, etc. There's very little freedom left in our free country. I'm not against surveillance, but tracking each person individually is a slippery slope. Attend a protest the administration doesn't like, they pull the video footage, next thing you know.. everyone there is on a watch list and is about to be audited by the IRS. You might even end up on a secret list for health care, kind of like the secret waiting lists at the VA. Ooo, I'm sorry, we have no openings for you.
By the way, your summary of our system of government is wrong. We elect people, but they don't represent us. Any talk of that ends the moment they win the election.
Then paintball some government cameras.
Re "It's probably also worth nothing that it's an investigation tool and can't be used as a source of positive identification."
Just like phone call parallel construction? Just like the use of lower cost cellular phone surveillance devices at a city and State level?
CCTV from city, state, federal and other sites will be joined in public private partnerships to ensure every face in some areas gets a good probability of been compared to existing databases or new faces saved for years.
Add in cell phone information at the same time, tracking license plates, getting the passengers face, over time builds up years of positive identification.
Add in tame partnerships between the private sector and the federal gov, very tame social media, very tame web 2.0 providers and helpful telcos.
The cpu costs per face and time per face is low, storage costs are low. Side on images and the physics of the lens distance is really the only difficult part left.
Funding for more CCTV can help with that. Social media can also be used to induce the wider public to upload many pictures of staff, friends, random faces in public for national "promote awareness" events. With gps, camera details kept in the uploaded file, good lighting, more resolution and lots of faces facing in the right direction for facial recognition.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Good. The privatization of the prison system is leading to what the ACLU is labeling massive human rights abuses. Coupled with our using the criminal justice system, ultimately ending up with the prison system, to deal with obvious mental health issues, and we've got incredible injustice being done in the name of the law.
And when they graft your face into photos that are not real you will do the same? This has already been done for political purposes (see Ross Perot) and used as blackmail.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
As proven repeatedly, most citizens commit at least 3 felonies every day. If you want criminals off the street, please be the first to turn yourself in. Don't forget to turn yourself in for future crimes too, which the many so called "Progressive" regimes are pushing for (including the US, UK, Australia, etc...)
Funny how you won't admit that the system is broken because you are not currently the target of an investigation. Piss off the wrong people, and that will change really quickly won't it?
People in the US today are afraid to express opinions, knowing that they can be a target for all sorts of trouble. So not only do people far criminals, the Government that is supposed to defend our Freedoms elicits as much or more fear.
This is the exact reason so many quotes exist like "Those who give up Liberty for temporary security will get neither". It's really too bad that people refuse to learn the lessons history can teach, and just as much of a shame that our "public" education system refuses to provide the lessons.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This is exactly what NSA has been doing, but this time it's "in the real world".
Why do they think people will accept this?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
All your face are belong to us.
DaveyJJ
"We save time by automatically discarding all white faces."
In Belgium, for a murder case, they checked the nearby cellular phone antenna and send all 1,400 phones connected at the time of the murder a message to look for witnesses (aka suspects).
I hope none of the innocent people will be in the vicinity of another one or two murders.
Misdemeanors are now felonies!
We do this in Canada too, and it works where the number of people you're trying to recognize is small. The "birthday paradox"* says that if you're comparing 23 people, you have a 50% chance of a match. You have to multiply this by the error rate (usually much less than 2%) of a facial match program to get the false-positive rate, but it's still huge.
The German federal security service tried out Siemen's facial matcher years ago, found it had a low error rate... and was completely useless!
When you had hundreds of criminals to look for in thousands of airport passengers a day, it was directing insane numbers of people to the "capture the terrorist" queue (;-))
--dave
[*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem]
davecb@spamcop.net
Minority Report, anyone?
I do not consent.
Unfortunately, many of the sheep in this country (and elsewhere, particularly Australia and the British Empire) simply don't care.
You are overruled. Move along...
Incidentally, on this day back in 2001 Richard Stallman talked about this same thing... it appears people really and truly don't care (enough) about the consequences of this. After all, people had 13 years to kick up a stink right? http://news.slashdot.org/story...
Tis, brakes that allow cars go fast!
Too bad people are lazy or just plain stupid. You must be young and haven't figured this out yet. Are you keeping the poor down, do you know some individuals that are? Do they tell you their plans to keep little tommy from going to college? NO. As long as people don not want to cooperate, are lazy or selfish, and just plain stupid, there will always be classes. You give your hard earned money directly to a adult that will waste it. See how you feel afterwards.
A jail is a jail, no matter how cool your phone might be.
Being an enemy is useless, if they know your whereabouts and activities. We're in prison. Get used to it. Pot is legal just in time, because we'll need to drug ourselves to not care.
You assume tomorrow will be just like today. This is not a static situation. The recognition systems will get better, then become nearly perfect. And they have other ways of cross checking the ID. This is not a game, and they are smarter than you.
So, we hide in boxes until we die, or live in prison.
False dilemma. We have other choices. Like, NO cameras.
Privacy an illusion? This is too easy. What's your name? Address? Children's names, sex ages, pics, and current locations?
How much do you make? What's your car plate ID? I'm sure you won't mind sharing.
Well DONE. People trust tech so much it doesn't occur to them that data can be faked, if you can access the system backdoors.