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Germany Tests Facial-Recognition Surveillance On 300 Citizens (dw.com)
An anonymous reader quotes DW:
Earlier this year, with no shortage of publicity, Berlin police found volunteers to participate in a test of a prototype facial-recognition system at Sudkreuz station. The system seeks to match images of people on CCTV cameras with pictures of the volunteers in a test database. Volunteers also wear transponders providing information about their whereabouts. Comparing the two sets of data will give a good indication of whether the technology is of any use.
Another DW article reports the six-month test is attracting criticism: Germany's interior minister is pleased with the initial results, but critics are wary of increased surveillance... The 300 testers who volunteered for the project carry a transponder that apparently only transmits data on ambient temperature, battery status and signal strength, according to the project staff member in the Sudkreuz station control room who explained the technology to [German Interior Minister Thomas] de Maiziere. But [activist Paul] Gerstenkorn contends the angle and acceleration of the testers are recorded as well... For German Data Protection Commissioner Andrea Vosshoff, the fact that active and not passive technology is being used is going too far. Unlike a passive chip, the transponder constantly transmits information that anyone can collect with the help of freeware available on the internet.
Vosshoff says the police have not "sufficiently" informed the testers, and called for the project to be temporarily halted...The interior minister has vehemently defended the project, saying the technology is not being used to catch petty criminals such as shoplifters, but terrorists and serious offenders. Four weeks into the test phase, De Maiziere has praised its "surprising accuracy" - specifically referring to people recognized by the software whose pictures are already stored in police databases. According to Germany's federal police force, pictures of all other passers-by captured by the surveillance cameras are "immediately deleted." After the six-month trial phase in Berlin, a decision will be made on whether automatic facial recognition will be implemented nationwide in Germany's train stations and other public spaces.
Another DW article reports the six-month test is attracting criticism: Germany's interior minister is pleased with the initial results, but critics are wary of increased surveillance... The 300 testers who volunteered for the project carry a transponder that apparently only transmits data on ambient temperature, battery status and signal strength, according to the project staff member in the Sudkreuz station control room who explained the technology to [German Interior Minister Thomas] de Maiziere. But [activist Paul] Gerstenkorn contends the angle and acceleration of the testers are recorded as well... For German Data Protection Commissioner Andrea Vosshoff, the fact that active and not passive technology is being used is going too far. Unlike a passive chip, the transponder constantly transmits information that anyone can collect with the help of freeware available on the internet.
Vosshoff says the police have not "sufficiently" informed the testers, and called for the project to be temporarily halted...The interior minister has vehemently defended the project, saying the technology is not being used to catch petty criminals such as shoplifters, but terrorists and serious offenders. Four weeks into the test phase, De Maiziere has praised its "surprising accuracy" - specifically referring to people recognized by the software whose pictures are already stored in police databases. According to Germany's federal police force, pictures of all other passers-by captured by the surveillance cameras are "immediately deleted." After the six-month trial phase in Berlin, a decision will be made on whether automatic facial recognition will be implemented nationwide in Germany's train stations and other public spaces.
This sounds great. Now even the people in Cologne get to live in East Germany.
...will be to identify and track political activists and democratic protesters. I bet we'll see a substantial uptick in arrests and harrassment after political rallies and protests once this is rolled out.
Regardless of what their laws say:
Our leaders.
Just throw up their pictures and decide it's free hunting season and the situation can be dealt with.
We all know the first directive will be Don't Hassel the Hoff. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Looky here, goy. You know what happened the last time Germany started surveilling her citizens!
Oy vey! It's anudda Shoah, I tells ya! Anudda Shoah!
The tracking device is only for the testing, to have correspond information. The aim is to figure out where you are through ubiquitous cameras. Sure, the current generation will hate it, but humans get used to things and with enough repetition come to accept almost anything as normal. The next generation will not be bothered so much. And the one after that? "Well, it's always been this way."
Obergruppenfuhrer Merkel wasn't happy with the way tattoos on the forearm worked out last time so now it's facial recognition.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The machine is always watching.
In effect, yes. 300 people that significantly contribute to the erosion of freedom.
In actual reality, I think they are just stupid and naive.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Speak up. Teach the rest of us. Make clear it'll create a world in which you don't want to live or raise children.
Speak up. Have your friends and family speak up. Speak up again. Teach your neighbours why it's important and have them speak up also. Keep on speaking up. Any way you can.
This actually goes for all our technology, but moreso with tech that makes puppets out of us, as this does.
These algorithms that recognize faces, fingerprints or other "difficult" things are usually just doing binary comparisons: how likely is the subject the one from database-picture 1? 2? 3? There is a number from 0-1 that represents the likelihood of a match.
So when forced to make a decision, you take the one with the highest number, provided that numbers is larger than say 0.5 or 0.8 or whatever threshold you choose. These things work just fine with 100 or 300 subjects in the database, but once you actually start using this in real life you're going to fill up the database with thousands and then ten thousands of possible matches. That's when the reliability goes down enormously. False positives: I see subject X while that person is not in the database at all, or I see subject X when it's actually subject Y who is in the database as well.
To perform a valid test you should find 40000 other photos and put those in the database as well before you start testing....
Yes. Thousands fled through the inner-German border and the state was finally brought to an end through a mostly peacful revolution.
Oh, that wasn't the German surveillance state you where talking about? Well, it was the most recent.
"After all, they can't track us with our cellphones all the time,..."
Indeed, and the newest ones have or will have face recognition built-in, so they _know_ it's you and not only somebody knowing your pass-code and they are recording 'only' _metadata_, that's newspeak for 'every step you make'.
"The question is not whether the technology works."
That's _exactly_ the question they are trying to answer, hence the transponders. So they can know that a volunteer _was_ there even if he wasn't recognized by the camera and they can check _why_.(Funny hat, big glasses, heavy makeup...)
Ditto the other way 'round if they were recognized but weren't actually there.
What's that got to do with what I said? Start your own thread.
Dear Slashdot, please not that using the EU flag for Germany is quite imprecise, and probably offensive for many German people.
So you're illiterate?
"the technology is not being used to catch petty criminals such as shoplifters, but terrorists and serious offenders" ... if you're caught robbing granny for crack you get a pass LOOOL ... now that's believable ... buy stock in baseballcaps, get the scramlApp NOW at half price, track thy neighbour with the freeware. In soviet germany the nazis will be defeated with their own tools !
... they practically gave the continent to the fanatics and now have to resort to all those things they so loftily spent money on speeching out against
... if it didnt all braincells would have fled by new and im the least of my brethren am i not ?
it's not getting out of hand, it IS out of hand, and they blame europe but europe is to blame for trying to carry too much in a decade where wages and employment stumble downward so this is like dropping nazi-germ in a petri dish of nazi-food
and we down here is all idiots, and its getting worse cos lately theres a "pick a side" attitude developing. Something you can't see from the 56th floor of montparnasse i'm sure. I been talking about this is gonna end in pogroms and long knives from one way to the other one way or another but thats probably inciting and hatespeech and when it happens it's gonna be my fault ? or maybe someone else who saw this coming from a lightyear away how long have i been yelling i want out of here ? europe isnt far enough away from here ? 10 years ? 15 ?
the more i try the more it traps me
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?