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Facial Recognition Algorithms -- Plus 1.8 Billion Photos -- Leads to 567 Arrests in China (scmp.com)
"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.
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.
This is so 'Person of Interest'.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I think we all have an interest in that figure for the upcoming debates on implementing 1984 as an operations manual in this country.
The end is near.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
DON'T let your picture ever hit the internet.
Chinese tested, Big Brother approved! Double-plus good!
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
until it is implemented in "other countries" - like the USA - just for your security. Running around with a face mask will make you even more suspect.
Looks like a high %ige of current population will support it as well - fear for crack-pots blowing up surroundings etc. and the bad people (rapists, criminals, gang members) coming into this country...
It all works out just fine.
This is really impressive considering they all look alike.
It turns out Apple's face recognition can't tell Chinese people apart
https://www.theinquirer.net/in...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
One thing is using face recognition under well-delimited conditions like what is being described at the top of the linked article (you look at a camera very closely to enter the building); but a completely different story is recognising random people in random situations with random training information (or have the Chinese authorities hundreds of pictures of every person from different angles?). Perhaps they aren't completely lying, but the real performance of this system is likely to be different than what the article and these numbers seem to indicate. It might be somehow helpful, but lots of mis-recognitions and relevant human intervention are likely to happen.
DISCLAIMER: I am not specially concerned about (face-recognition) tracking and privacy, although I see all this as potential threads to citizens and expect legislations to gradually restrict all the actions on these lines.
DISCLAIMER 2: I am not Chinese, don't live in China, the Chinese government shouldn't have any information about me and I look quite different than most of Chinese people. In fact, that system shouldn't have too many troubles to identify me for these and other reasons.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
No: the US should be concentrating on reducing the number of crimes first. Traveling with cash, possessing politically incorrect plant products, having a beer in a park, or sex between consenting adults (for money or for free) should never be illegal. The US keeping 1% of its adults incarcerated is a disgrace. No need to make this job easier for the thugs that enforce the laws.
Actually, I think hindering technology based on policy needs can be a VERY good idea -- sometimes society is not ready for a technology. Just because we CAN, doesn't mean we SHOULD. One of the driving forces towards criminal justice reform after 2009 was the cost of policing and incarceration. Change that equation, and reform stops.
Same with self-driving cars -- they have the potential to be a privacy and surveillance nightmare.
Facebook has way more than 1,8 Billion photos that many people are more than happy to tag with identities. I checked and something like 300 million photos a day. Of course they're not all people, but I'd guess there are plenty of them.
Odds are high that the photos, EXIF information and tags/names have probably already been sold to "various agencies"
... photos don't create criminals.
BOLO is a thing whether it works at a snail's pace or the speed of light
Facial recognition is not the same as fingerprinting or DNA, but it's pretty damned close.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I wonder if there's legal remedy. If Bob's camera points into MY backyard, and sends video of it to a third party (say: Google), could I sue Bob for violating my privacy? Could I legally blind the camera with an IR emitter if a high fence isn't allowed or practical?
2017-1984=33. It just arrived in a different place and at a different time than Orwell envisioned.
Organization? You must be joking..
Fortunately, once you're in many of said countries, they're too corrupt to be terribly effective at policing. Customs might be somewhat effective, but once you're in, things are much looser than the US or China.
For the Poe's Law impaired, this is satire...christ I hope it *stays* as satire.......
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Do you remember Space Quest ... the part with the slot machine with a laser that burned you to dust?
I think it said "YOU LOSE, HOMEBOY!"
There was a movie a few years back detailing the history of East Germany and they had some people go thru the archives of what had been collected about them before the reunification. The chinese have just discovered a much more efficient way to collect data. It is already in the US to some extent with toll tags keeping track of many peoples movements and of course lots of cameras. I thought the US cameras were only reviewed on demand. I'm sure we will buy this from china and keep track of people like we do cars in no time.
The security services and police are doing this al over the world for parallel construction.
The images of a driver, their passenger down a main road, cell phone collection, voice prints, front and back vehicle registration plate.
Every illegal migrant could be caught in near real time but for some reason is not.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If you have anything on LinkedIn, it's quite possible the Chinese government has been collecting information about you,
If that makes them happy, they can waste as much time and resources in accomplishing pretty much nothing of value as they wish. My public online activity is an open book for the Chinese government and for any other person/government. In fact, I do welcome everyone expecting to have any kind of interaction with me to know as much about me as possible. I have no relationship with Chinese anything, have never visited that country and am not planning to do it in the future either; so, collecting information about me seems quite pointless, but completely up to them.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
... 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.
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.
If I compare 25 people's birthdays to one another, I have a 50% chance of getting a match. That's because I compare one person with 25 others, another with 24, another with 23, and so on. That's with a 1:365 chance of sucess on a single trial (0.27%).
Now try this with a few thousand "people of interest" out of 25 billion.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
"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.
TV is preparing kids for this future. Ever seen a show called "Special Agent Oso"? They have surveillance cameras in drones that look like ladybugs watching the children.
Who will enforce the dictator's will if the police aren't even willing to and everything stops?
If necessary, automated drones and (soon to become mandatory) implants will easily discipline (or eliminate) any member of the public service that dares to deviate from his supervisors will.
And attempts to conspire (between the usually many distinct services a totalitarian regime sets up in order to make sure any one of them has to fear the others) will be detected before anyone could even convince a hand full of people to join his cause.
But the fear of not being able to sustain a life if one's "social credit score" falls too low might even make the above unnecessary.