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.

Comments

POI

[fluffernutter]

This is so 'Person of Interest'.

And how many were false positives?

[sehlat]

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

Re: And how many were false positives?

[c6gunner]

Why would that be relevant? People make false positives all the time, too, and presumably these are double-checked by the actual cops making the arrest, the prosecutor bringing the case, and the judge and jury involved in assessing his guilt.

Sure, if China was flying drones which had free-fire authorisation to gun down anyone identified as a criminal, then false positives would be pretty damn important. But when they're just picking suspects out of a crowd for a human cop to arrest? I don't understand your concern.

Re: And how many were false positives?

[sehlat]

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?

Re: And how many were false positives?

[b0s0z0ku]

One reason for concern:
It makes it easier for police to do their work.

Snap a picture of protesters. Run it through software, ID them, pick them up at home, or next time they go to a public place with facial recognition cameras.

Police work should be difficult -- it helps make sure that cops concentrate on serious crimes, not going after protesters, "vice", or jaywalkers.

A perfectly law-abiding, perfectly controlled society where everyone is shit-scared to go outside the norm will be extremely boring and sad.

Re: And how many were false positives?

[eluusive]

This technology doesn't cause the problem, but it certainly exacerbates it and grows the power of the people who are currently burning people.

Re: And how many were false positives?

[sehlat]

It would be nice if you could give at least ONE reason why you're concerned about this technology specifically, rather than tangential factors.

It makes mistakes easier to justify and excuse.

"Well, the system SAID he was Felonious Monk. We're sorry he died in custody, but we were just doing our jobs."

Re: And how many were false positives?

[b0s0z0ku]

That's essentially what the US Bill of Rights was intended to be -- a limit on police powers. The concept has a long history.

Re: And how many were false positives?

[king neckbeard]

For starters, if you are tracking someone with facial tech, you can find something that at least appears criminal with enough justification to bring them in. Follow someone around all day, and you can eventually find them doing something that you can jail them for.

Re: And how many were false positives?

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Re: And how many were false positives?

[b0s0z0ku]

Yep, I'm insane and proud of it. Sometimes, people need to have the truth rubbed in their faces. If it causes you or anyone else a bit of inconvenience, too bad. Vote for people that will change the law so people won't have to block highways to make their point.

Re: And how many were false positives?

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Re: And how many were false positives?

[b0s0z0ku]

And I'm sure that any of us on Slashdot could list half a dozen countries off the top of our heads that have long standing policies of repressing its peoples and using violence to silence dissent.

The US tops this list going back to the strikes of the 1890s and 1920s and Red Scares, going through the Civil Rights era, the War on Drugs, free speech zones in political conventions, through journalists being faced with 50+ years in prison for covering anti-Trump protests today.

Which side are you on?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: And how many were false positives?

[Kjella]

A 1% false positive rate of a few dozen claims makes it rare, less than 1 per case. A 1% false positive rate of a few billion peoples photos makes it common, around 10 million people false positives per case.

Since the Chinese aren't big on privacy I'm guessing they'd pair it with cell phone location/call data and potentially other electronic traces. The last figures I found said 1.39 billion cell phone subscriptions to 1.38 billion people, so for the vast majority of people you already have their approximate location. So after you've eliminated all the very likely matches to a cell phone and excluded all the unlikely matches because they're somewhere else, made some reasonable assumption on how far anyone that's gone off the grid could have come then maybe you don't have all that many unaccounted for. Of course you could try to subvert this but then if a license plate reader, electronic ticket/payment or a good photo recognition detects that you're not where your cell phone is that's a big red flag.

Checking if the people in your close proximity are also people you've been in electronic contact with is also very likely to narrow it down, like if the person standing next to you resembles a friend on Facebook it's probably him. Multiple encounters can also be seen in context, like if it appears you've met the same person several times you can accumulate exclusions. It's also possible that with a low quality recording you can sufficiently track an unknown person to a good camera based on clothing and such. Like we could only see you talking to a guy in a blue jacket from a distance, but he went to the subway station where we got a nice mug shot. There's lots of ways to make the base error rate not all that important.

Re: And how many were false positives?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

REAL SCARY.

[WolfgangVL]

The end is near.

The Future is here!

[McFortner]

Chinese tested, Big Brother approved! Double-plus good!

How long will it take

[no-body]

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.

Re:How long will it take

[PolygamousRanchKid]

until it is implemented in "other countries" - like the USA - just for your security.

Oh, you can be fairly certain that this is used in the US already.

We'll just have to wait for the release of Wikileaks Vault 11 for confirmation.

Wow

[dcollins117]

This is really impressive considering they all look alike.

Re:Wow

[arth1]

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.

Offenders asking for democracy will be arrested...

[ffkom]

... 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.

Re:Offenders asking for democracy will be arrested

[b0s0z0ku]

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.