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Controversial Police Facial Recognition Test Fails to Recognize Anyone in London (independent.co.uk)
Police officers have just begun testing facial recognition software in London. Slashdot reader Bruce66423 reports:
After all the concern about the [first] trial, it appears to have been a bust. "Police have admitted that no one was arrested during a trial of controversial facial recognition technology, which sparked privacy and human rights concerns," reports the Independent. On the other hand, this may lead us to get to get complacent about the threat that is out there.
Detective Superintendent Bernie Galopin, the force's lead for facial recognition technology, pointed out that "All alerts against the watchlist will be deleted after 30 days and faces in the database that did not generate an alert were deleted immediately." But an advocacy and policy officer from the National Council for Civil Liberties complains that pedestrians were never informed what was happening -- except for one man who was apparently stopped erroneously after a "false positive" match (which the officers failed to first confirm on their own).
"Opponents argue that the software currently being used by British police forces is 'staggeringly inaccurate' and has a chilling effect on society," reports the Independent, "while supporters see it as a powerful public protection tool with the ability to help track terrorists, wanted criminals and vulnerable people....
"The use of facial recognition is more prevalent in the U.S., where it was used to track down an alleged mass shooter following a massacre at a newspaper's office last week."
Detective Superintendent Bernie Galopin, the force's lead for facial recognition technology, pointed out that "All alerts against the watchlist will be deleted after 30 days and faces in the database that did not generate an alert were deleted immediately." But an advocacy and policy officer from the National Council for Civil Liberties complains that pedestrians were never informed what was happening -- except for one man who was apparently stopped erroneously after a "false positive" match (which the officers failed to first confirm on their own).
"Opponents argue that the software currently being used by British police forces is 'staggeringly inaccurate' and has a chilling effect on society," reports the Independent, "while supporters see it as a powerful public protection tool with the ability to help track terrorists, wanted criminals and vulnerable people....
"The use of facial recognition is more prevalent in the U.S., where it was used to track down an alleged mass shooter following a massacre at a newspaper's office last week."
So it's wrong all the time, insanely expensive for what it is, insecure and potentially abused by bad actors, and it erodes public expectations. Does it come in gold? We have someone dumb enough to want that over here, bigly.
ARM... for now.
The British public seems quite willing to put perceived safety above freedom, which is unfortunate because politicians are good at scaring people.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Wouldn't something as simple as a round clown nose counter this sufficiently?
Just like the EU: Every failure is a reason for more EU.
Is this how leaving lemmings rationalize themselves? You vote in sh**ty[*] elected national officials whose incompetence messes up things, then pushes them as 'needs more EU,' then EU gets the blame, nice. Well, milk this excuse all you can for the next few months, since, you know, after Brexit kicks in, the EU will ... umm ... be isolated from the Great Britain and all. So you'll have to own up to your failures - more of them, at least, since 'EU made me do it' will no longer go as far.
[*] one has only to look to the last two UK cabinets to see gardens of blooming incompetence. It would be hilarious if it were Monty Python, but sadly it is not.
" Every failure is a reason for more EU."
Oh like the American military? I see!
Mostly random stuff.
Whataboutism
Always good to see this surveillance state madness fail.
before an innocent person is misidentified, and beaten or killed by police. Remember when London police executed a brazilian national, literally removing his head with dozens of gunshots, during the London bombings a few years ago? It's just a matter of time before something like that repeats.
Maybe they made no arrests on purpose, just to mislead the public into thinking the tech doesn't work as well as it does...
ARM... for now.
ARM is a bit old to be considered part of "these days" though you could argue that they're still making new designs and it's those to which you were referring. However, almost none of the big players use the standard design any longer and instead license the ISA and build their own custom cores. Even some of the Chinese phone companies are starting to get in on building their own SoCs and it probably won't be long before they start developing their own cores for those designs as well.
Considering how much better the custom cores turn out than the stock designs, I'm not sure ARM is doing anything too great at the moment. RISC-V could even supplant them in terms of ISA development, but I'm not putting as much stock into that as some others are.
The British public seems quite willing to put perceived safety above freedom, which is unfortunate because politicians are good at scaring people.
The British public is hardly unique in that regard. Countries outside of the U.S. are hardly immune to terrible leaders (and no good mainstream choice for replacing them) but at least the founders put enough safeguards in place to prevent those leaders and an idiotic electorate from doing the kind of harm that's being done to Britain at the moment.
Naw, ya doofus. I'm in the EU, a EU national to boot, and slightly steaming from the ears watching the eurocrats do their europhile eurohumping eurothing. On top of the invariably incompetent local government the eurocrats are completely failing the grade every time (since staffed with gravitated-upwards-due-to-lack-of-weight ex-local politicos), and both have a habit of trying to hide behind the other. But moreso, every time something doesn't go as planned, king drunkard or someone similar will loudly proclaim that the obvious solution is "more EU". Literally. Every. Fucking. Single. Time.
No really, pay attention to what the eurocrats themselves say for a change.
Yeah, I miss the days when America wasn't a vassal colony of a foreign power :(
while some accuracy would be desirable, the whole idea is that false positives give "probable cause" to 'legally' stop and question or search anyone, anytime, for any reason.
Given that facial recognition is successfully used in other countries, both in the private and public sectors, it's pretty apparent that problem lies with the British police image databases that contain mugshots that are too low in resolution and contain artifacts. Why the British police haven't tried using their images of their own personnel in the field trials is baffling. Perhaps the failure is going to be used as an excuse to require the population to replace their picture IDs with higher resolution pictures and criminals to get new mugshots.
because terrorists !!
It's almost as if misrepresenting, distorting, and outright lying about facts to serve an agenda is a bad thing. Guess it depends on the outcome though right AmiMoJo? Expanding police power bad, but promoting SJWs fantasies? You love you some misrepresentations then.
"Countries outside of the U.S. are hardly immune to terrible leaders"
Countries inside of the U.S. too. Politics has broken down in many corners of the world.
An easier solution would be to return a name like Mohammed, Ahmed, Mahkmoud, Achmed, Mamoud, or some other variant. Based on my last visit to London, it'll just happen to be right about 75% or the time by default.
It is a feature.
...There are zero countries inside the US.
Blasphemous as it may be to suggest this on a techie site ... maybe the money could have been better spent finding and training up more people who can recognise faces better than other mere mortals, seems a very freaky skill to someone like me who can barely remember anyone!
http://superrecognisers.com/
"The use of facial recognition is more prevalent in the U.S., where it was used to track down an alleged mass shooter following a massacre at a newspaper's office last week."
No, no it wasn't. The Maryland case was the police using facial recognition to identify a suspect they already had in custody, who refused to identify himself. Nothing whatsoever to do with tracking someone down.
Come on EditorDavid. If you're going to editorialize, at least try to get the facts straight. There might be some concern about the cops using this success to justify more surveillance, but in truth the one has nothing to do with the other. They just ran his picture through DMV photo databases, mugshots, etc.
A setback for those in the UK keen on establishing a police state.
Such a shame. 1 billion more will be spent to try again.
Government, in general. Something not working? More government is always the answer, but it's never the solution.
> I have always wondered what good thing comes out of the UK these days. Is there?
Irish redheaded girls.
But they're not *British*, and some of the most stunning are Catholic girls from Northern Ireland. And yes, I dated a few when I was younger, in Catholic school. *Yowzah*. The UK includes a lot of cultures with enormous distinctions from the London nobility.
I blame increasing dental visits.
The NHS just had an anniversary that was highly publicized, and it's clear people are finally doing something about their manibles, maxilla, and teeth, all of which would throw this sort of thing off.
Nobody could have foreseen that a system with a 98% false positive rate in trials would fail to work properly when rolled out.
Is there any reason to really think that the use of this face recognition software did in fact not work?
If there aren't such facts, then I for one can imagine how authorities would benefit from keeping secret or simply suppressing the effectiveness of such type of software.
It's British reality that government implements fail.
It really is 1984 in UK:
"Failure Is Success!"
"Success Is Failure!"
et cetera & ad nauseum.
In the US and elsewhere, cell phone data is often used to exclude or include people who might be under suspicion of a crime. It doesn't necessarily lead to arrests, and may not be used in court, but it helps reduce the amount of work needed to be done during the process of an investigation. This data is usually used after the fact, not at the moment police are swooping in. Facial recognition likely falls into this category.
Just because the system didn't lead to any arrests, doesn't mean that no one was recognized, and doesn't mean the system has no usefulness.