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Chinese Police Test Gait-Recognition Technology That Identifies People Based on How They Walk (scmp.com)
You can tell a lot of things from the way someone walks. Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Watrix says its softwares can identify a person from 50 meters away -- even if they have covered their face or have their back to a camera -- making it more than a match for Sherlock Holmes. From a report: Known as gait recognition, the technology works by analyzing thousands of metrics about a person's walk, from body contour to the angle of arm movement to whether a person has a toe-in or toe-out gait, to then build a database. "With facial recognition people need to look into a camera -- cooperation is not needed for them to be recognized [by our technology]," said Huang Yongzhen, co-founder and chief executive of Watrix, in an interview in Beijing. Features like this have given Watrix an edge in catching runaway criminals, who tend to avoid surveillance, said Huang. Police on the streets of Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, have already run trials of gait recognition technology, said Huang, and the company officially launched its 2.0 version last week, which supports analysis of real-time camera feeds at a mega-city level.
Is the organization in charge called the Miistry of Silly Walks?
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
They are really running with this whole dystopia theme. Making the west look like slackers in comparison.
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As various remote sensing technologies improve, reduce in cost and become more pervasive coupled with improvements in pattern recognition techniques, I supect public disguise will become nearly pretty much impossible. Regulating this stuff and enforcing regulations with hefty penalties will be the only real solution for public privacy.
As many popular dystopian works people have been exposed to, I'm surprised more people aren't up in arms to prevent private entities from doing the same in the US.
Assuming steady computational power growth and improvements in low cost sensor technologies, it's pretty much inevitable that tracking in public will be commom state of affairs. Our culture tends to work on a reactionary basis instead of laying groundwork of prevention so I find it worrying that this will occur in the US.
In a metropolitan or suburban area, a private entity could relatively easily deploy sensors that cover most of a region. They could then collect all the data privately, creating their own tracking system. They could then easily sell/license this information which local police, government officials, etc. who could use this information without a search warrant needed. It's really no different than what Equifax does when you think about it.
The more and more privatized our country becomes, the less protections we can be afforded for privacy and basic rights. Imagine a future where most property is owned by a few wealthy individuals (we're not far away already). There will be little constitutional restrictions to what private capital can do on their own property with respect to surveillance, just like what Equifax can do with accumulating privately collected data.
It's invasively happening on the internet already with advertisers and marketing... it will eventually hit the streets. I suspect many retailers are or have already been experimenting with these techniques. Right now, the computational power and sensor cost requirement are probably too high for ROI but that will definitely change and costs lower, and that's just retail.