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China Working On 'Repression Network' Which Lets Cameras Identify Cars With Unprecedented Accuracy (thesun.co.uk)
schwit1 shares a report from The Sun: Researchers at a Chinese university have revealed the results of an investigation aimed at creating a "repression network" which can identify cars from "customized paintings, decorations or even scratches" rather than by scanning its number plate. A team from Peking University said the technology they have developed to perform this task could also be used to recognize the faces of human beings. Essentially, it works by learning from what it sees, allowing it to differentiate between cars (or humans) by spotting small differences between them. "The growing explosion in the use of surveillance cameras in public security highlights the importance of vehicle search from large-scale image databases," the researcher wrote. "Precise vehicle search, aiming at finding out all instances for a given query vehicle image, is a challenging task as different vehicles will look very similar to each other if they share same visual attributes." They added: "We can extend our framework [software] into wider applications like face and
person retrieval [identification] as well."
We already know our police drive around parking lots scanning license plates. This builds up a nice amount of location data of where the vehicle goes. Since it's in the public space, they get to do this.
I wouldn't be surprised if any public cameras or perhaps red light cameras weren't sending location data of each and every car either.
It's terrible and we as a society shouldn't tolerate it, but the majority will let it happen until things all fall apart. Unfortunately just how most of us humans are.
If the network is ran in US, it is a "freedom" network. Spreading freedom can also mean dropping bombs and starting wars oversea.
Mass-surveillance is really a sword with two edges. It's really useful for crime investigation and stuff, but there's also the usual "muh privacy" concerns.
How can we find a balance?
Just looking at the technology alone, it seems like this would be a problematic system, especially if you want to evade it. Car scratches and dents can be repaired, increase in number or even be faked (decals). Something as simple as your car being dirty and then cleaning it would fool such a system until it read your plate again. However, this just means it's good for short term recognition using high resolution cameras. The same applies for using it on people.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
How much violent crime occurs in China?
The murder rate in China is about one quarter the American rate.
Violent robberies are about one sixth the American rate, although I would trust this figure less than the murder rate.
I lived in China for several years, and never felt unsafe.
Property crimes are a bigger problem, and unattended belongings may go missing.
... can't be far behind. Eg. maybe they'll discover you can put clear tape on your car with a fake scratch printed on it, to be changed every day. Looks like technology will again help make life more complicated by a notch.
which can identify cars from "customized paintings, decorations or even scratches"
So time to paint the car with eInk that can change randomly. Fake scratches and dents that move around and change shape.
China's investment in surveillance tech means that you can buy some really amazing weatherproof high-resolution varifocal cameras from Chinese manufacturers (e.g. Dahua) for a fraction of what such cameras cost ten years ago.
It's revolutionizing home and business surveillance in the U.S.A.
Attach a band aid to the exterior of the car and the identification system will fail. Any alteration in the cars appearance will drive current computers bonkers. As it stands right now the cops can read the plates of every car they pass and get a hit on which cars are stolen. But as it stands lots of car thieves are being taken away due to the current technology. It will become a much more robust system with more and more recording stations set up to catch people.
NOT!
Caution: Contents under pressure
...to help self-driving cars correctly identify defaced street signs.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Domestic violence, especially rape, is also vastly under-reported.
Yeah, being able to identify stolen cars even after they have had a paint job is repression, of course it is. Everybody knows it is basic human right, stealing other people's cars and selling them on.
[quote][...]could also be used to recognize the faces of human beings. Essentially, it works by learning from what it sees, allowing it to differentiate between cars (or humans) by spotting small differences between them.[/quote]
Is that the Chinese government's way of saying that all those Chinks look the same to them?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is just an idea published by some Chinese researchers, actually a fairly pedestrian idea based on recent approaches to machine learning in computer vision. The researchers were clever in choosing a controversial name for their approach ("a repression network"), but there is no indication that this approach is actually used anywhere, in China or elsewhere, whether it would scales to millions of cars.
BTW this is the same thing with face recognition. On curated databases of tens of thousands of faces taken in reasonably good condition, face recognition achieves very high scores, better than humans (who would remember 10,000 faces?) but in the real world, not so much, the technology is not that useful yet in practice. It will probably come though, eventually.
Now I can sell millions of magnetic scratch and imperfections decalcs in China.
What will China come up with next? A Mobile Oppression Palace?
Perhaps Matt Groening shouldn't give them any more ideas.
We just saw that self-driving cars can be fooled by putting a strip of duct tape on a stop sign. I'm not sure how realistically accurate this is going to end up being.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Now we'll start seeing that deployed in the US.
Of course it would be. Otherwise citizens could make a very valid argument that the government isn't doing a very good job. Even if some people have to die or be emotionally scarred for life, the health and well-being of the Party is more important than any single individual.
Again, the difference is that you don't have to use Facebook.
So Chinese corporations have the same degree of autonomy as US corporations? Even in the US, corporations are often proxies for the government.
From what I see, it's not so simple as protecting the status of the party. From the first line of the Wikipedia article:
> Rape is a common crime in China. Marital rape is not illegal in China. Same-sex sexual assault between males was made illegal in late 2015. [1]
The article includes many relevant. It's been a longstanding accepted practice, as it was throughout history. The concealment of it and its frequency in china, compared to the more open investigations and reporting in the USA, makes comparing violence in the nations more difficult.