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Facial Recognition Algorithms -- Plus 1.8 Billion Photos -- Leads to 567 Arrests in China (scmp.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the face-the-music dept.

"Our machines can very easily recognise you among at least 2 billion people in a matter of seconds," says the chief executive and co-founder of Yitu. The South China Morning Post reports: Yitu's Dragonfly Eye generic portrait platform already has 1.8 billion photographs to work with: those logged in the national database and you, if you have visited China recently... 320 million of the photos have come from China's borders, including ports and airports, where pictures are taken of everyone who enters and leaves the country. According to Yitu, its platform is also in service with more than 20 provincial public security departments, and is used as part of more than 150 municipal public security systems across the country, and Dragonfly Eye has already proved its worth. On its very first day of operation on the Shanghai Metro, in January, the system identified a wanted man when he entered a station. After matching his face against the database, Dragonfly Eye sent his photo to a policeman, who made an arrest. In the following three months, 567 suspected lawbreakers were caught on the city's underground network. The system has also been hooked up to security cameras at various events; at the Qingdao International Beer Festival, for example, 22 wanted people were apprehended.

Whole cities in which the algorithms are working say they have seen a decrease in crime. According to Yitu, which says it gets its figures directly from the local authorities, since the system has been implemented, pickpocketing on Xiamen's city buses has fallen by 30 per cent; 500 criminal cases have been resolved by AI in Suzhou since June 2015; and police arrested nine suspects identified by algorithms during the 2016 G20 summit in Hangzhou. Dragonfly Eye has even identified the skull of a victim five years after his murder, in Zhejiang province.
The company's CEO says it's impossible for police to patrol large cities like Shanghai (population: 24,000,000) without using technology.

And one Chinese bank is already testing facial-recognition algorithms hoping to develop ATMs that let customers withdraw money just by showing their faces.

8 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. And how many were false positives? by sehlat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think we all have an interest in that figure for the upcoming debates on implementing 1984 as an operations manual in this country.

    1. Re: And how many were false positives? by sehlat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How would it be relevant, you ask?

      Consider a day when you, an innocent citizen are walking down the street and a spotter camera identifies you as Criminal Name. The police pick you up with their gentle presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and haul you off to the local jail for processing. How long, if ever, before the police realize their mistake and release you? Meanwhile, you can't go to work and lose your job and because you were in jail, you also lost your apartment because you didn't pay the rent. During your time in jail, you are treated with warmth and respect by your fellow inmates.

      Look up a movie called "Blind Justice" a fact-based story about an innocent man who was mistaken for a serial rapist, and who endured a 14 month nightmare. Arrested for armed robbery, kidnapping and rape, he loses his wife and business, and then his REAL problems snowball.

      Do you need any MORE reasons to be concerned?

    2. Re: And how many were false positives? by c6gunner · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Effectively, it is. We jail people for felonies for tactics (like blocking streets) that are run-of-the-mill in more civilized countries like France. It's not a protest unless it causes a bit of discomfort -- people confined to "free speech zones" don't count.

      Your right to protest does not trump my freedom of travel. If you and your goons want to hold me hostage by blocking my car on the highway, I'm fully in favour of the cops dragging your asses to jail. If you think it's "more civilized" to allow every pissed off asshat to disrupt the lives of thousands of people, you're insane.

    3. Re: And how many were false positives? by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Re: your McVeigh example, I'm not going to concede that terrorists are always wrong. Though McVeigh's cause was pretty irrational:

      We can thank "terrorists" for:
      (1) an Ireland free of British control
      (2) the State of Israel (the Irgun)
      (3) slowing down Nazi atrocities in Europe (the resistance movements were branded as "terrorists")
      (4) the American Revolution, for better or worse

      Ultimately, I'm against technology that makes it easier for governments to crush rebellion and civil unrest, because the two are sometimes good, proper, and necessary.

    4. Re: And how many were false positives? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Bull. I was given a jaywalking ticket (no cars were coming from either direction) by two cops who had nothing better to do. They were hiding off to the side of a cross-walk, turned in such a way that their uniforms were not visible under their jackets. As soon as someone would cross the road the would pop out and turn around and detain them while they wrote a jaywalking citation. Once they were done, they would hide themselves again and wait for the next unlucky person to come by. Once they can just mail every jaywalker a ticket like they do with red-light cameras, I have little doubt that some jurisdictions will see dollar signs and start doing so.

  2. Re:Wow by arth1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I see that you got modded flamebait, but it appears to be true that members of ethnic groups that a person does not have much to do with do appear to "look alike". Our built-in facial recognition system appears to become fine-tuned to work with the faces that surround us, and is less efficient at other facial types.
    So for someone who hardly ever meet different ethnic Chinese, distinguishing the faces of Chinese can indeed be hard. And I'm sure the opposite is true too - to a Chinese who has not seen or met many Westerners, they may have a hard time telling them apart, unless there are severe differences like "beard vs shaven", "black vs white" or visible deformities.
    Likewise, it appears to be harder to estimate the age of people from ethnic groups one is unfamiliar with.

    This might be an opportunity.for facial recognition to assist us, throwing up the name, age and some short info on people when it can be determined. It might even help some people tell Bill Murray and Tom Hanks apart.

  3. Offenders asking for democracy will be arrested... by ffkom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... as quickly and efficiently.

    Let's face it: The times when totalitarian regimes could be toppled by "the people" are over. The technology allowing even small groups in power to suppress all kinds of opposition is already available, it is getting "better" and more broadly deployed by the month, and it is there to stay.

    "Freedom" had its brief stint in human history, but in a few decades from now nobody will remember what it was. And given how parents today raise children used to permanent observation, the grownups by then will probably never have experienced freedom first and, and won't know what they are missing.

  4. Re:Offenders asking for democracy will be arrested by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let's face it: The times when totalitarian regimes could be toppled by "the people" are over.

    No, it just raises the threshold of rage required to do so. There's a point where people, including the police, stop giving a shit and turn out into the streets. Who will enforce the dictator's will if the police aren't even willing to and everything stops?

    It happened in Romania in 1989 -- Ceausescu got an unexpected Christmas present of lead and the people got freedom for Christmas.