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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.

4 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 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.

  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.