Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

China Unveils World's First Facial Recognition ATM

Posted by timothy on from the dystopian-possibilities dept.

An anonymous reader links to an article at IB Times according to which: China has unveiled the world's first facial recognition ATM, which will not allow users to withdraw cash unless their face matches their IDs. The machine was created by Tsinghua University and Hangzhou-based technology company Tzekwan. It has a camera installed in it that captures the facial features of the user then compares it with a database of identification photos.

3 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Epic fail: someone always matches by davecb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This scheme will work for one branch in Lesser Nowhere, Sechwan Province, with a finite and small set of pictures, and a small number of crooks. Once the number of faces increases, the probability of a false positive explodes, roughly as (N 2) (select every two out of N), where N is the size of the pools of pictures + the person being scanned.

    The well-known example is the "birthday paradox", in which twenty-three people at a party increases the probability of two of them having the same birthday to fifty-fifty. That particular case was because the actual probability was multiplied by (25 2) = 25! / ((25-2)! * 2!) = 6900 comparisons being made, times 1/365 chances of a hit.

    The German federal security service considered using one of my then employer's recognizers for airports to catch terrorists, but ended up facing the problem of accusing grandma of being part of the Bader-Meinhoff gang (;-)) No matter how accurate we were, a few more people in the pool would give us false positives. We'd need roughly an accuracy of 99.9 followed by roughly as many decimal places of 9s as there were powers of ten of people.

    --dave

    --
    davecb@spamcop.net
  2. Re:I for one.... by gnupun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What they're trying to do is cover their own asses

    No, this is big brother technology. They can now map the serial numbers of the currency from the ATM to a person. One step closer to cashless, surveillance society.

    Although it could also be used to prevent a thief with stolen debit card and password trying to cash out someone else's money. But then how would a thief get somebody's PIN.

  3. Re:Photo by jklovanc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps you might look into what slippery slope actually means. A slippery slope fallacy argues that if A happens then B will inevitably happen. In this case your premise that requiring picture will inevitably lead to requiring DNA is the slippery slope fallacy. Pictures do not lead to DNA. By the way, we already require pictures on driver's licenses. The GP was refuting your slippery slope argument not making one.